The other night I took advantage of the cloudless skies to do a little stargazing, a favorite pastime of mine since I was very young. With my binoculars, I peered up at the Orion nebula, the Pleiades, and the companion stars Mizar and Alcor (dubbed “the horse and rider” by ancient Arabian astronomers) in the handle of the Big Dipper.

Watching the night sky reveals a marvelous phenomenon. If you begin looking upward at dusk, the only celestial objects visible to the naked eye — aside from the moon, if it’s in view — are a few of the nearer planets (which always outshine any stars) and a sprinkling of the brightest stars. As the sun’s light fades, more and more stars appear, until finally the sky is sufficiently dark to fill with pinpoints of light.

But here’s what’s truly amazing. If you look up at that same night sky with binoculars, the number of stars you can see suddenly multiplies a hundredfold. Where the unaided eye can make out the groupings of brighter stars called constellations, magnification brings out thousands of fainter objects that otherwise escape one’s view. A high-powered telescope uncovers millions more. In an instant, the sky that under normal conditions appears like a black canvas randomly dotted with tiny twinkles becomes so thick with lights that little unilluminated space can be seen between them.

I’m awed by the might of a Creator who can fashion this innumerable array of heavenly wonders — a universe that only grows richer and deeper the more closely we examine it. If you’ve seen some of the photographs taken by the Hubble orbiting telescope, which has enabled scientists to look further into space than any earthbound telescope ever has, you know that God’s physical realm teems with incredible sights beyond our ken. And the greater our ability to examine God’s handiwork grows, the greater still the scope of His imagination and majesty is shown to be.

Every aspect of the Christian’s life shares this characteristic. Like the night sky, the spiritual blessings in Christ reveal more and greater wonders the more closely we experience them, and the more we come to know about our God and Savior, the more amazed we are. Think about how great His grace seemed the day you were baptized into Christ, and you stepped forth from the water knowing all of your sins had been washed away by the blood of Jesus. Now think how much more reason you have to rejoice in Him today — how much more mature an appreciation you now have of the kindness and mercy He’s shown you!

Paul wrote to the Christians at Philippi, “And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment, that you may approve the things that are excellent” (Philippians 1:9-10). The more time we spend developing our knowledge of God and His ways, the more understanding we gain of how excellent the things in Christ are. Only through continuing in faithfulness, in progress toward maturity, and in study of the Scriptures can we begin to “comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height — to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge” (Ephesians 3:18-19).

As Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, observed, “His compassions fail not; they are new every morning” (Lamentations 3:22-23). Even as the extent of our physical vision cannot encompass the entirety of God’s creation, so too our spiritual vision, though it grows clearer, cannot in this life fully perceive the possibilities of our Lord’s matchless blessings. The more we learn of them, the more we have yet to learn.

Rightly does Paul describe our heavenly Father in Ephesians 3:20 as “Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think.” Wonderful is His name!