Stars

When is the last time you were able to go outside at night and look at the stars?  If you live in a city or a place with lots of streetlights fighting against their brightness, it is not easy to do.  But when you have and you can, looking at the deep darkness with brilliant pinpricks shining brightly, it’s hard not to feel something special, something Holy.

“But when I look at the stars,
when I look at the stars,
when I look at the stars I see someone else”

There is peace in their expansiveness.  Our problems somehow seem smaller.  My dad tells a story of a night when my baby sister Abbi was pretty sick with pneumonia.  He took her outside on a chilly night to let the cool, dry air calm her lungs.  Looking up into a clear cold sky, he was also calmed and knew all would be well.

“Stars lookin at our planet watching entropy and pain
And maybe start to wonder how the chaos in our lives could pass as sane
I've been thinking bout the meaning of resistance, of a hope beyond my own
And suddenly the infinite and penitent begin to look like home”

Switchfoot is another one of those special bands whose music often spans the divide between so-called secular music and Christian Contemporary.  Their song “Stars” is a pretty heavy rocker with some booming guitars.  But for this morning, we’ll listen to their acoustic version.  For me, the message here reminds me that when I stare up into the vast expanse of bright stars on a black velvet tapestry, I can feel like everything and nothing at the same time.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6v21K5gZgJo

Because we are all a part of God’s creation, because He made us all from the same mélange of beautiful chemistry, we feel a strange kinship to things of beauty in this world.  When we recognize the Holy in those things around us, we are in essence seeing a part of ourselves…seeing God that is within us…in what is outside of us.

How can God create and care for the universe and all that is in it, and still care for me?

“Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory in the heavens.
Through the praise of children and infants
you have established a stronghold against your enemies,
to silence the foe and the avenger.
When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
human beings that you care for them” (Psalm 8:1-4)

This is the awesomeness of God.  Even though there a million-billion other people, places, events and things for God to be mindful of at any given moment, He still loves and cares for me as a individual and unique part of His creation.  When I feel a Holy connection to those stars in the sky, reveling in their majesty, I say to myself “I am nothing like this”, but it is God saying to me, “You are this to me”; perfect, beautiful, infinite and Holy.

“When I look at the stars,
the stars, I feel like myself”

So, on the next clear night, find a quiet dark place to go outside and look at the stars.  When you stand in awe of their beauty, recognize that you are not seeing something outside of you, but merely looking in the mirror of God’s creation, seeing the beauty that is in you.