NLC Connect - Sept. 9, 2026

I absolutely love the night sky.
Sitting outside and staring at the stars is one of my favorite things to do. There's something about looking up and trying to comprehend just how enormous it all is that immediately turns my thoughts toward God.
And almost every time I do, two songs come to mind:
How Great Thou Art and So Will I (100 Billion X).
One is an old hymn. The other is a modern worship song. But when I'm sitting under the stars, they both give words to the same sense of wonder I feel.
There's a scene in the movie I Still Believe that my mind goes back to. Jeremy Camp and Melissa are sitting together in a planetarium, surrounded by stars and galaxies.
Melissa begins talking about how unimaginably vast God is. She compares the universe to a painting. We paint with brushes, but God paints with stars and galaxies.
I love that picture.
Think about that for a moment.
The night sky as God's canvas. Stars and galaxies as His artwork. A universe so enormous that we can't even begin to comprehend its size—and God spoke it into existence.
And then Melissa brings all of that vastness down to something incredibly personal:
“The God of a trillion stars knows my name.”
That's the part that gets me.
Because isn't that exactly what How Great Thou Art invites us to remember?
The hymn begins with someone looking around in awesome wonder at everything God's hands have made.
The stars. The worlds. The thunder. The vastness of creation.
But the story of the song doesn't end with creation. It eventually moves toward God's love and what He has done for us.
The God who painted galaxies knows your name.
He knows the prayers you haven't been able to put into words. He knows the things that keep you awake at night. He knows your joys, your fears, your family and your story.
And He has a purpose for your life.
You are not lost somewhere in the vastness of His creation.
That's why I love pairing How Great Thou Art with So Will I.
The roots of How Great Thou Art go back to a Swedish poem written in 1886. Later, missionary Stuart Hine helped shape the English version after experiences traveling through the Carpathian Mountains, surrounded by the beauty and power of creation.
Decades later, So Will I looks at creation through the eyes of another generation.
Stars. Galaxies. Mountains. Oceans.
The language is different.
The music is definitely different.
But listen to what both songs are doing.
One generation looks at the stars and responds:
How great Thou art.
Another looks at those same stars and says that if all of creation worships its Creator:
So will I.
That's the connection.
Neither song is really about the stars.
They're about the God who made them.
And both remind me that when creation shows us just how big God is, His love shows us something equally incredible:
The God who is that big has chosen to come near.
We're Still Looking Up
Long before either song was written, David looked toward the heavens:
"When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars..."
—Psalm 8:3
And then David asks essentially the same question that comes to my mind when I look at the night sky:
With a God this big, who am I that He would think of me?
Thousands of years later, we're still looking up.
Maybe that's part of why songs about God's creation have connected with worshipers across generations.
Whether we're singing words written long ago or a worship song written today, we're responding to the same truth:
Creation reminds us how great God is, and His love reminds us that the God who is that great knows us personally.
If you have some time this week, listen to How Great Thou Art and So Will I back-to-back.
If one isn't normally your style, listen anyway. Don't listen first for the instruments, the tempo, or whether it's something you would have chosen.
Listen for God.
Listen for what someone from another generation is trying to say about Him.
And sometime this week, step outside and look up.
Look at the stars.
Think about the God who put them there.
Let yourself feel small for a minute.
And then remember that being small isn't the same as being insignificant.
The God of a trillion stars knows your name.
He sees you.
He knows you.
And He has a purpose for your life.
No wonder generations before us sang about His greatness.
No wonder a new generation is still singing about it today.
The songs change.
The generations change.
But He doesn't.