Physicist Alan Lightman is a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is known for specializing in the intersection between science, philosophy, religion, and spirituality. He writes about a profound, transcendent experience in his life:

It was a moonless night, and quiet. The only sound I could hear was the soft churning of the engine of my boat. Far from the distracting lights of the mainland, the sky vibrated with stars. I turned off my running lights, and it got even darker. Then I turned off my engine. I lay down in the boat and looked up. A very dark night sky seen from the ocean is a mystical experience.

After a few minutes, my world had dissolved into that star-littered sky. The boat disappeared. My body disappeared. And I found myself falling into infinity. A feeling came over me I’d not experienced before. ... And the vast expanse of time — extending from the far distant past long before I was born and then into the far distant future long after I will die — seemed compressed to a dot. I felt connected not only to the stars but to all of nature, and to the entire cosmos. I felt a merging with something far larger than myself, a grand and eternal unity, a hint of something absolute.

Lightman is in awe of nature but is unsure where that should lead him:

It is almost as if Nature in her glory wants us to believe in a heaven, something divine and immaterial beyond nature itself. In other words, Nature tempts us to believe in the supernatural. But then again, Nature has also given us big brains, allowing us to build microscopes and telescopes and ultimately, for some of us, to conclude that it’s all just atoms and molecules. It’s a paradox.

Possible Preaching Angle:

God offers unbelievers opportunities to consider the meaning of life, eternity, and their place in it. Some, like this professor will taste and then turn away (Heb. 6:4-10), while others will recognize the hand of Almighty God and bow before him (Ps. 8, Ps. 19).