Kevin Hartnett Poetry

Creation & Astronomy Index

Beauty Reaches Through the Eye
Saturn

Behold the Fleeting Meteor
Meteor

Blackened, Lifeless, Cold, and Grim
Comet Close-Up

Can It Be?
Moon

Dazzling Phosphor in the Night
The Star Sirius

Do You Know the Order of the Planets?
Io over Jupiter

Eartbound Eyes Can E'er But See
Orion Nebula

God Knows What You'll See!
Cat's Eye Nebula

Impossibly Gigantic
Whirlpool Galaxy

Lesser Sphere of Darkest Space
Solar Eclipse

Minister of Mystery
Comet Hale-Bopp

One World Is Immaterial
Crescent Moon

Praise Him in the Arts for the Sciences
Spirograph Nebula   

Sovereign King and Caring Lord

Ten Thousand Time a Thousand Still
Globular Cluster M80

The Incarnation
The Star Capella

The Lesser Light Which Rules the Night
Lunar Eclipse 

The Stars I See Are Yesteryear's
The Pleiades

The Tadpole Swims Within His Hands
The Tadpole Galaxy

Though Men Refine Electric Lights
The Summer Milky Way

Tiny Flickers Overhead
Star Field Near Deneb

'Tis There Beyond the Reach of Earth
Moon and Venus

What Matter Is So Strange as This?
Comet Hyakutake

What Name Has He for Me?
Hodge 301

What, Oh Man, Now Do You Know?
The Ant Nebula

                  

Alphabetical Index

A Homeschooler's Happy Reflection
And in That Darkened Fluid Red
And Love Ever Echoes 
And Then...
And Yet Till Now Is Not Enough
Beauty Reaches Through the Eye
Behold the Fleeting Meteor
Blackened, Lifeless, Cold, and Grim
Boundless Living God Eternal
Can It Be?
Christ Is Born in Bethlehem!
Come Now, Look to Me
Dazzling Phosphor in the Night
Do You Know the Order of the Planets?
Eartbound Eyes Can E'er But See 
Even So, Come Quickly
For I Believe the Gospel
God Knows What You'll See!
Hallowed Be Thy Name!
Harbor of My Heart's Desire
He Came for Us
He Who Places Faith in Jesus
Here Within Your Purposes
Honored Be Thy Wondrous Word
How Awesome Is That Day to Me
If Ever a Complaint
If He Had Faltered Even Once
Impossibly Gigantic
Jesus Christ, Our Great Redeemer
Lesser Sphere of Darkest Space
Look, Mary, Look
Mercy Triumphs Over Judgment!
Minister of Mystery
My Soul Must Seek to Carry On
Naked and Alone, Hung the Son of God
O Higher Let My Praises Reach!
O the Riches in the Gospel!
One World Is Immaterial
Praise Him in the Arts for the Sciences
Prince of Peace, Thou Glorious Rider
So I Will Praise Him in the Night
Sovereign King and Caring Lord
Sow Then the Precious Seeds of Hope
Ten Thousand Time a Thousand Still
The Incarnation
The Lesser Light Which Rules the Night
The Stars I See Are Yesteryear's
The Tadpole Swims Within His Hands
There, into Peace
This Picture His
Though Men Refine Electric Lights
'Tis There Beyond the Reach of Earth
You Go Before Us
We Esteemed Him Not
What Am I Doing in the Kingdom?
What Matter Is So Strange as This?
What Name Has He for Me?
What Now Do You See?
What, Oh Man, Now Do You Know?
Where Beauty Gleams with Grace
Worship God 2006 Conference                        

Impossibly Gigantic

Photo credit: NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

Impossibly gigantic,

Yet hid from normal view;

With silent force controlling

The sum in your purview.

And is it not these likenesses,

In beauty, strength and grace,

That take my eye to see in you

The Great Designer’s trace?

-- K. Hartnett, July 2002

To whom, then, will you compare God?  What image will you compare Him to? (Isaiah 40:18)
 

The Whirlpool Galaxy - Almost Beyond Comprehension

Spectacular in its clarity, this image of M51- the Whirlpool Galaxy in the constellation of Canes Venatici- was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, high above the blurring effects of the Earth’s atmosphere.  It reveals the true nature of galactic spiral arms: immense structures of gas, dust and clusters of stars curving through the emptiness of outer space.  The size of this system boggles the mind.  If one were to reduce our own Solar System of planets- billions of miles in diameter itself- down to the size of a cookie, this galaxy in proper scale would be larger than the entire United States!  Spiral galaxies rotate everything in them in immense orbits that take millions of years to complete.  The earth is being flung right now with the rest of the Solar System at high speeds around the center of our own galaxy.

Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all.(1 Chronicles. 29:11)

In this poem I liken various attributes of God to the qualities of a gigantic spiral galaxy.  Both are too grand to fully comprehend.  As huge as our own Milky Way galaxy is, and despite the fact that it is silently hurling our entire Solar System around its center at a speed faster than a bullet’s, we live completely unaware of its presence and influence.  How similar this is to God!  Every moment our lives are silently guided in His powerful sovereignty, but we don’t even know it!  Then too behold the majesty and beauty of the galaxy’s spectacular and mysterious spiral arms.  All these things bring us to behold  the Genius of creation Himself, the Great Designer of all.

The Incarnation

Photo by Kevin Hartnett

Notwithstanding mankind’s stature-

Ever lost from dust made more-

God In-finite-man, a Savior,

Bore the filth of earthen floor.

-- K. Hartnett, December 1976

Then the Lord God formed man of dust…(Genesis 2:7))

And she gave birth to her first-born son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger…(Luke 2:7)

He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree…(I Peter 2:24)

The Star Capella - Beauty at the Change of Season

Herald of the crisp and cold winter nights of  northern latitudes, the bright star Capella rises prominently in the east during the late fall months.  Capella is the sixth brightest star in the sky.  At a distance of only 45 light- years, it is also one of the closer stars to our Sun, and actually shares the Sun’s beautiful yellow color.  The color of a star is determined by its temperature, much in the same way as iron glows differently when it is heated to various degrees.  Lower temperatures produce reddish hues; extremely hot ones show as brilliant blue-white.  Capella is actually part of a multiple star system, with a nearby companion star, and two more at a greater distance in orbit around the primary two.   Astronomers have found that the majority of stars in our galaxy are part of such pairs or groupings.

Lift up your eyes on high and see who has created these stars, the One who leads forth their host by number, He calls them all by name; because of the greatness of His might and the strength of His power not one of them is missing. (Isaiah 40:26)

I wrote this poem during the Christmas season following my first year of living as a true Christian.  In it I try to verbalize the unspeakably great  truth that God Himself in the form of Jesus Christ became incarnate, that is, came as a man, to humbly pay for sins through His death and thereby reconcile sinful men to Himself.   The scriptures reveal Christ as simultaneously fully God ("Infinite man") and fully man ("In finite man").  He humbly laid aside His heavenly prerogative for glory and was born on a stable floor in the flesh of dust from which He originally created Adam.  Later in life He would also bear the spiritual filth of men’s sins on the cross as a substitutionary sacrifice.  The last line of this poem seeks to capture simultaneously  these interrelated  thoughts.

One World Is Immaterial

Photo by Kevin Hartnett

One world is immaterial;

One such, that human eye can see.

Indeed the more ethereal

Directs the latter’s destiny.

-- K. Hartnett, September 2002

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:18)

The Moon in Phases - Seen and Unseen

Our celestial companion, the Moon, appears to us differently each night of the month.  This is because as it circles the Earth, we see it from different angles with respect to the Sun.  When it is opposite the Sun, it appears full, for we see its fully illuminated face.  At new moon, when it lies in the same direction as the Sun, it is invisible-  due both to the brightness of the daylight sky, and to the fact that we are looking toward its non-illuminated face.  At first quarter and last quarter, when it is respectively one quarter and three quarters of its way around the Earth (as measured from new moon) we see a half-illuminated circle.  Things in life can look one way, but be another in reality.  The scriptures speak authoritatively about both seen and unseen beings, worlds and forces.  We do well to study both the material and immaterial aspects of existence.

For by Him all things were created, in heaven and on Earth, visible and invisible…and in Him all things hold together. (Colossians. 1:16-17)

In this little poem I play with the idea that just as you can normally see part of the Moon but another part- though very real- is black and invisible, so too there are whole worlds that we see, and those that we do not.  Indeed astronomical detectors that are designed to respond to certain wavelengths of light but not to others also teach us that real energies exist that our five senses cannot detect.  The spiritual, or immaterial world is every bit as real as the one we detect with our eyes and ears, but happens to be invisible to them.
 

Ten Thousand Times a Thousand Still

Photo credit: NASA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

Ten thousand times a thousand still-

The might of suns reduced to sand-

Thus so the vaunted sons of earth

Are brought to naught at His command.

-- K. Hartnett, December 2001

He brings princes to naught, and reduces the rulers of this world to nothing. (Isaiah 40:23)

Globular Cluster M80 - Lessons in Humility

Scores of globular star clusters like this one- located in the summer constellation of Scorpius- are found orbiting the center of our huge spiral galaxy, the Milky Way.  Most contain hundreds of thousands- some as many as a million- stars.  The entire galaxy is thought to contain approximately 150 billion stars!  If this were not hard enough to comprehend, astronomers now know there are also billions of galaxies stretching through space as far as telescopes can see.  The scriptural analogy between the number of stars in the heavens and the grains of sand on the seashore turns out to be a well-chosen one.  Most astronomers believe globular clusters contain among the oldest stars in the universe, but several recent observations about the types of stars at their centers, and the number of stellar collisions they manifest cast some doubt on this understanding.

He counts the number of the stars; He gives names to all of them. Great is our Lord, and abundant in strength; His understanding is infinite. (Psalm 147:4,5)

God is frightfully powerful, and this is indeed a powerful understatement.  Psalm 33:6 tells us that “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all their host by the breath of His mouth.”  Each of the heavenly host- each twinkling star- is really an unimaginably  colossal cauldron of churning and flaming plasma.  Our small sun alone could hold over a million earths inside.  That there could exist a being who simply speaks such items into existence is truly a cause for wonder, fear, and humility.  In fact, He treats the stars as if they were so much sand.  Little wonder then that God simply laughs at the pride of men and devils who oppose him (Psalm 2:4).  In the end, He will banish His enemies by a word that strikes like a sword from His mouth (Revelation 19:21).
 

Beauty Reaches Through the Eye

Photo credit: NASA JPL and the Voyager Team

Beauty reaches through the eye,

To light upon a humble soul,

And teach this other-worldly truth:

“No second piece conveys the Whole.”

-- K. Hartnett, January 2000

For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. (2 Corinthians 4:6)

The Planet Saturn - Queen of the Planets

The beautiful planet Saturn lies next outside the Sun from Jupiter, the king of the planets.  Saturn is indeed the second largest planet of the solar system.  Its disk is about ten times the diameter of the Earth. Stretching around the disk however, lies Saturn’s most remarkable feature: a spectacular system of multi-layered rings.  Spectral analysis of the light reflected from these rings indicates that they are comprised primarily of water ice in millions of pieces that range in size from granules to house-sized chunks.  The existence of the rings is somewhat perplexing to astronomers since it would seem that structures of this sort are inherently unstable and will either collapse into the planet or disperse into space in a relatively short period of time.  The simple, but undeniable beauty of this lovely ringed orb points us to the ultimate source of all beauty, God Himself.  No created thing can match the beauty of the Creator.

Splendor and majesty are before Him; strength and beauty are in His sanctuary. (Psalm 96:6)

Succinctly stated, the thought that I tried to express in this poem is this: every beautiful created thing points to an even more beautiful Creator.  We know about  love because God is love. We know about Fatherhood because God is a Father.  We know about beauty because God, the ultimate First Cause of everything, is also beautiful.  Proud people are not likely to recognize this because they have a difficult time honoring and thanking God.  To the humble and worshipful of heart, however, every tiny piece of creation reminds them of the magnificent Genius who fashioned it all.  No item of creation, be it ever so beautiful, can convey the infinite beauty of the Source.
 

Blackened, Lifeless, Cold and Grim

Photo by Kevin Hartnett

Blackened, lifeless, cold and grim-

Such was my estate in sin.

Then the mighty Son drew me;

Hence I’ll shine by His glory.

-- K. Hartnett, October 1999

But God, being rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)…(Ephesians 2:4,5)

Comet Close-up - Making Much from Nothing

An astronomer once commented that the tail of a comet is “as close to nothing as you can be, and still be something!”  Pushed into space by the action of the solar wind, the tail of a comet can stretch faintly for millions of miles behind its icy nucleus.  The sooty mixture of dust and ices that forms the tail is intrinsically no prettier than week-old snow on the side of a highway.  Vaporized off the comet’s surface, this ugly “smoke” spreads out so thinly in the vast expanse of space that we would consider a sample of a comet’s tail to be a fine vacuum here on earth.  It is only because of the brilliant illumination of the sun that these vapors can be seen at all against the jet blackness of outer space.  Cometary debris drapes the inner Solar System in gigantic sheets.  Their tiny bits of grit burning up in the atmosphere produce the phenomenon we call meteor showers when the earth passes through them.

Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. (Isaiah 60:1)

This poem likens our lives to the cold, dark,  icy comets that float through outer space.  Under the influence of the sun’s gravitation, they are drawn into the inner Solar System where they are warmed and display their marvelously beautiful tail or tails.  Spiritually speaking, our lives are no different.  Jesus said “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” (John 12:32).  God the Father in his kindness, not based on any intrinsic merit or beauty in us, draws men through the sacrifice of his Son to himself, so that they can reflect His manifold glories.
 

Earthbound Eyes Can E'er but See

Photo by Armen Caroglanian

Earthbound eyes can e’er but see

Causes circumstantially.
Lift your eye to heaven’s view:

He who forged the stars formed you.

-- K. Hartnett, November 1998

Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, who formed you from the womb; I am the Lord, who alone stretched out the heavens; who spread out the earth by myself. (Isaiah 44:24)
 
The Orion Nebula - Beauty Wrapped in Clouds

The Great Nebula in Orion is considered by many astronomers to be the finest example of a diffuse nebula visible from earth.  Located below the three easily-recognized stars that form Orion’s belt, this magnificent sight is simply a vast cloud of low density gas and dust illuminated by nearby stars.  At the heart of the nebula, visible only as a bright white glow in this photograph, is a small cluster of stars known as the Trapezium.  This grouping is easily seen in amateur-sized telescopes.  Many think that the stars of this nebula are in the process of coalescing from the material surrounding them, although the precise nature of this process is poorly understood.  The nebula appears to be about 1500 light years away, making its true size in space approximately 30 light years across.

Of old you laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. (Psalm 102:25)

We learn through studying astronomy that the earth is not the only existing planetary world.  If one never looked into the heavens, however, one might not easily come to this appreciation of reality.  In a similar way, minds that are focused on temporal and visible  things miss the reality that a sovereign Being governs them all.  Without this understanding, life can seem haphazard and purposeless.  In this poem I use a play on words to equate the lifting our eyes to see the heavens, with the lifting of our spiritual vision to an immaterial, heavenly view.   Since the heavens actually declare the glory of God, a humble study of them can marvelously increase our spiritual understanding as well.
 

Praise Him in the Arts for the Sciences

Photo credit: NASA, ESA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

Praise Him in the Arts

For the Sciences…

Praise Him in the Sciences

…For His Art.

-- K. Hartnett, December 1998

Great are the works of the Lord; they are studied by all who delight in them. (Psalm 111:2)
 
The Spirograph Nebula - a Cause for Wonder

This amazing and beautiful object is found in the constellation of Lepus the Hare, hiding in the winter sky beneath the feet of Orion the Hunter.  Catalogued by astronomers as IC 418, this object is known as a planetary nebula because in small telescopes, its circular shape appears very much like the disk of a planet.  In reality, the shape is caused by layers of gas that have been ejected from the central star due to complex physical processes there.  As one shell of gas moves away, cools, and slows down, it is then flooded by ultraviolet radiation from the star which causes it to fluoresce.  The colors represent the various chemical constituents (nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen) of the shells.  The remarkable patterns within this and other planetaries are assumed to be based at least in part by the rotation of their central stars, but remain poorly understood to date.

"Who is like You, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like You, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders? (Exodus 15:11)

Look about you- there’s no greater scientist or artist than God Himself.  The artistic sensitivities of men should rightly be employed to honor the exquisite engineering, mathematical, and scientific  foundations  of the  universe.  Likewise, scientists and engineers would do well to  worship God for the artistic beauty and intricate simplicity of His creative genius.  In the Spirograph Nebula, we see astounding beauty resulting from complex scientific processes expressed to God’s glory in one tiny corner of the universe.