hand studies

Who has ... with the breadth of his hand marked off the heavens?

Isaiah 40:12 (NIV)

"A hand breadth is the distance from the tip of the thumb to the tip of the little finger when the fingers are completely spread apart.

"God is so great that He marked off the heavens by the breadth of His hand. We can't really calculate the distance across the universe. We do know that the nearest star, other than the sun, is about four and a half light years away. Since light travels at the speed of 186,000 miles per second, that nearest star is over twenty-six trillion (26,000,000,000,000) miles away.

"And that's just to the nearest star! The distance across the entire universe, whatever it is, would simply be in an incomprehensible figure to us. Yet God tells us He merely marks off that distance with the breadth of His hand."

—Jerry Bridges, The Joy of Fearing God