(Sun Moon) STARS
“Let there be lights made in the heavens, to divide the day and the night, and let them be for signs, and for seasons and for days and for years.” (Genesis 1:14)
Stars are a big conversation killer! At least verbal, audible conversation is stilled and hushed under the stars.
Under the full force of a clear night sky, talking slows and falters; whatever seemed important to chatter about fades away for a while. Alone or alone together with a friend, the stars impose their silence on us.
Once in a while, when friends leave my house in the evening, I’ve discovered I have to accompany my guests out to their cars because there are no street lights, and I live enough out in the country so that the stars are actually a walking hazard! Eyes just are attracted upwards to the myriad of twinkling lights that hint at various colors and size and vast spaces. Over the years I’ve grabbed the arms of a few guests to gently steer them away from the edge of the driveway!
They’re not just “there” in the night sky; they’re compelling. They’re so much “more” than we are, in this material universe, that we don’t even have adequate words for the effect they have on us.
But the stars can be comforting when we consider they, too, have a Creator even greater than they are. The psalmist speaks so charmingly of this Creator “Who tells the number of the stars: and calls them all by their names.” (in Psalm 146) No, He doesn’t “name” them with a name, but naming in the Bible means that He knows their characteristics and qualities so well, so intimately that He knows them individually, as though they each had a fitting name that He gave them.
Yes, they’re there for “signs and seasons” too, like all the heavenly lights. All humans, for tens of thousands of years have found their way through the dark with the help of the position of stars at their various positions throughout the night. Ships have sailed the seas at night, navigating by the position of the stars.
Marking times and seasons. One time, many years ago, terrible things happened to our family in the late Fall. I intensely remember where Orion was in relation to a big window in our house. I’d look up at Orion and sob and sob…. Two decades later, Hubbie was sick for his last time; and Orion was back in that same position, reminding me of “all the trouble in the world.” And yet – it is beautiful and mysterious, even when we know the names of the stars and nebulae that make it up.
My little essay about the stars is not so very good. Reach down inside of you and make up your own essay. Write about the stars, what they mean to the world, and to you.
No matter what happens to our world in this present generation, the stars will remain. Later generations, who have no memory of us, will look up at the same stars that we can see tonight.
Tags: Beauty, Creator, Nature, Stars
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