I'm forever blowing bubbles...

Recent composite photo studies of the observed sky have shown the universe to be an expanding "bubble", an accurate representation of which is below:



Where did it all come from? What's outside the "bubble"? Isn't it strange that we are able to look at all this and begin to get an understanding of it all?

I was struggling with the idea of "Heaven" the other day, after a relative died. It seems so vain to imagine a whole world where you can arrive, and live in a different place or time where there is another "reality". Then I thought about here and now - could you explain to someone that we exist in a bubble of matter, outside of which is unknown, and that inside this worlds and stars and nebulae exist, and that on (probably) just ONE of these there is a thing called "life" where creatures live and die, some huge and ferocious, others that walk and talk and build things.

Can you begin to truly explain how "real" this is, how millions of tiny things called "atoms" stick together in different ways, making a coffee cup, a lid, and a mixture of water and coffee beans that these lifeforms ingest which converts into skin and blood and muscle.....?

When you realise the complexity and improbability of "Earth", "Heaven" doesn't seem quite so incredulous after all, does it?