Chorizo or outer space?

It was supposed to be a joke. Or so said Étienne Klein, renowned physicist at France's Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission when he shared the image of the spicy Spanish sausage on Twitter last week, labeling it as Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the sun, noting the "level of detail" it provided. He apologized later, after the terrible backlash it created. Many people are so high-strung that jokes are anathema to them. I’m not an occasional one such as this, especially in such a serious field as cosmology, makes me smile.

But on another personal perspective, this news lightens up my spirit invoking the heart to praise God. For if there is anything that’s surprisingly common between a piece of spicy pork sausage and a distant star in the farthest reaches of outer space, it is that both were created by God, the latter on the fourth day of creation, the former on the sixth day when the animals were formed, pigs included. Indeed, even if we simply use the extent of the knowledge man has known so far in physics and chemistry, both the chorizo and the distant stars are made up of the same elements and sub-atomic particles science has identified so far. There’s no difference between them except one is millions of light-years away and the other one you can buy in Carbon Market.

Which really invites the question of relevance. Human beings usually try to distinguish between items of knowledge and compartmentalize them into universally-agreed fields and make them absolutely distinct as to be mutually irrelevant with each other. Astrophysics has nothing to do with a popular Filipino (or Spanish) dish, which mistaking one for the other is absolutely a joke, regardless of whether readers or viewers approve of it or not. But to a believer of God, all things are connected since he created all things.

Before stars were created, God was there, and it was him who created them on the fourth day. God existed even before time became time, and was already there when he created living animals, pigs included, on the sixth day of creation. If there is anything common between stars and chorizo, or anything and everything else for that matter, it is the God who created all and made all! And this is especially true of the beauty and grandeur of all things that exist, living or inanimate, from the smallest ones to billions of stars that exist!

Whether we expand our minds to the hugeness of the universe or look into the microscopic details of a slice of chorizo (and its heavenly taste, to some, that is), we do so in wonder and amazement of the grandeur of God. If there is anything common to us all, and to all things, it is that we have a common Creator. And whatever beauty we find in all things, though marred by sin, they all point to a perfect and holy and merciful God, who offers us eternal life, by grace, through faith in our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Let us not forget, whatever we think or do, God is always there.