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In January 1997 astronomers announced a new discovery. By means of the orbiting Hubble space telescope theory became fact. Scientists gazed at a cluster of some 2,500 galaxies. The cluster is Virgo. They saw for the first time heavenly bodies that had for a long time been theorized to exist. The bodies are isolated stars without a galaxy for home. The stars are said to drift more than 300,000 light years (Just think! 5,880,000,000,000 multiplied by 300,000 years) from the closest galaxy, or three times the diameter of the Milky Way.
Writes John Noble Wilford, the New York Times, "Somewhere along the way they wandered off or were tossed out of the galaxy of their birth, out into the cold, dark emptiness of intergalactic space.... Astronomers theorize that these isolated stars were displaced from their home galaxies as a result of galactic mergers or tidal forces from nearby galaxies. There they drifted free of the gravitational influence of any single galaxy."
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What strikes me about the isolated stars is they are exiting apparently homeless. This seems unnatural. Stars are formed within a constellation. The constellations have been identified by type: spiral, barred spiral, irregular, elliptical. These systems are life families, sharing a common interdependence, a communion. Possibly a star can cope with this isolation well, but human persons cannot do so.
The Church serves as a covenant communion, or Christ constellation with a gravitational pull encouraging us not to drift off into isolation from the Galaxy. Persons who leave the Church rarely do suddenly. Most persons become unfaithful to their vows of church membership and thus to the Head of the Church gradually.
Romans 12.10 reads, "Love each other with genuine affection, and take delight in honoring each other." Matthew Henry (b. 1662) writes regarding this passage and its context of verse 9-16.
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