As you might guess from the header and title of my blog, the night sky has always held a strange fascination for me. Perhaps this is because they are so orderly. No wonder man has seen pictures in the sky almost since the advent of written language. Oh, and incidentally the person who comments and correctly identifies the constellation in the image above gets treated by me to the Starbucks poison of thier choice, minus the astronomy lecture :). I’ll give you five seconds (Jeopardy theme plays ominously in the background). Finished? Okay then…is that your final answer?
Billions of points of light, rearranging themselves, fluctuating in intensity. Some are intimidated by the sheer vastness of the universe; I am calmed. My belated study of astronomy began when Mircat visited this past weekend. Charles, Miriam and I drove to nearby Shultz pass and spent a good hour gazing up at the sky, contemplating the meaning of life (Miriam and I are agreed about the supremacy of chocolate, while Charles argues for tacos). The next night, we made the trek to Lowell Observatory. The last time I visited Lowell, I was a gawky eighth grader in town for a band competition (yes, I do play flute and yes, there was an incident one summer at band camp 😀 ). Impressively, we were able to see the rings of Saturn. Chilled from our nighttime endeavors, the three of us proceeded to Outback where we warmed ourselves with good food and good conversations.
Phillipians 2:14-15 is a reminder to:
14 Do everything without complaining or arguing, 15 so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe.
I am grateful that, like the stars which often are born in interconnected pairs, I am privileged to walk side by side with friends who sharpen me and challenge me to shine more brightly than I’d sometimes like. Instead of deifying the stars and planets, as the ancient Greeks did, I notice the fingerprints of the Creator scattered across the heavens. They still speak, if only we bend our ears to the stillness and our eyes to the points of light that make the darkness bearable.
Stardust Memories 