The Stars at Night
It was one of those evenings we have occasionally. It was clear, no wind, low humidity and a temperature somewhere in the mid forties. I think the cedar pollen was relatively low that night. The air felt good to the skin, the cool air was invigorating to the lungs. I had gone out to feed the dogs, I sat down and looked up to feed my soul.
One of the advantages to White Bluff, where I live, is that there are no city lights and very, very few street lights. It is dark out here. That night was absolutely perfect for star gazing and my goodness did they ever put on a show. Any direction I turned was a symphony of light... bright to nebulous, twinkling to steady, stacked to scattered. There was so much to see that it was overwhelming and all but impossible to take it in. Soothing, thrilling, and just plain beautiful. It was a "wow" moment.
I was still somewhat mesmerized the next day when I remembered the night. I got on the computer to learn a bit more. One of those stars I guess I saw was Alpha Centauri. It is the closest star other than our sun to Whitney. It is a mere 4.24 light years away. Somewhere up there or out there is Barnard's star, the second closest at 4.6 light years away.( all distances approx. from the covered bridge in White Bluff) The farthest visible star is Star Carnae at 200 light years. The farthest galaxy clocks in at 13.2 billion light years away. A light year is 5,878,499,810 miles. There are between 200 to 400 billion stars in our Milky Way Galaxy.( I know that is a big difference but seriously, when you lose track at 87 billion and have to start counting again, any astronomer might be off by a hundred billion or two.)Do the math, those suckers are long way off. I didn't know I could see so well. The trouble is when we star gaze, we are literally looking back in history, ancient history. By the time the light from those stars reaches my back yard, they may be dead, gone, burned out. I'm seeing light that began its journey to my eyes long before my eyes or even my world was created. Turns out we can all see a long way, can't we?
We see back into history, can any of us see very far into it? No, not really. While I was sitting in the yard a couple of weeks ago about 10:30 PM I was just enjoying the show. I had a dog sitting under each hand, getting an ear rub. One of them decided to "thank" me and jumped up to give a lick--he got me right on my glasses. I took them off to clean with a hem of my tee shirt and noticed I couldn't see any stars. Unable to focus without the proper lenses their awe and beauty were lost to me. There were still there, I just couldn't access them with my weak eyes no longer assisted my glasses. I suppose many of the things of God are like that. We can see back into our history but don't realize that that old stuff is gone. We face circumstances in life where we can't see God at work, but like the stars during the day or when our faith lenses are cloudy, He is still there. Like starlight, a lot of what appears pretty and nice now, may actually be already gone. And when we can't see into the future, we can always look by faith to Jesus who always gives us enough vision to
follow Him into it.
The vastness of the universe I can't begin to comprehend. I just enjoy the show and marvel at its beauty on starry, starry nights. And God is bigger and His love more vast and almost beyond comprehension is this truth: He loves you and me. You won't get that message from the stars but from the One who hung them and named them (Ps.147:4) and demonstrated that love for us that while we were yet sinners, He died for us. (Romans 5:8) At least a part of eternity should be to gaze into that truth for a few light years and let it sink in.
Deep in the heart,
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