I’ve spent the week in Montana, under the “big sky.” But the sky isn’t just big during the day, you could say that it’s even bigger at night. The night sky adds a more expansive third dimension and the deeper perspective added by the stars creates for an impossibly vast range of perception. Add some altitude, remove a lot of light pollution, and the results are spectacular.
Read Genesis 15:1-6
He brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your descendants be.” (Gen 15:5)
To place yourself, one tiny speck, on one tiny speck of a planet, orbiting one tiny speck of a sun, in one tiny speck of a galaxy, and so on, is a humbling experience. All at once, you’re confronted with a crisis of significance. How is it that I, or any of us really, could possibly matter at all? If God the creator holds responsibility for all of this, how could we measure up?
But we do! The promise made to Abraham under a starry sky is the same promise God has made for us. That we are a part of God’s story and cannot be separated from it. The God that has created the heavens and the earth has created each one of us, unique, wonderful, perfectly imperfect. What could be more significant than that?
Look up into the starry heavens, tonight or in the nights to come, and know that I will be doing the same. Be reminded that God’s promise unites us under this same sky and that our story matters. Dream about what comparable act of significance we might accomplish together, trusting in God’s faithfulness to each of us tiny specks.
May God’s peace come to you this day. -Pastor Peter
Let us pray,
Star light, star bright,
First star I see tonight,
I wish I may, I wish I might,
Have this wish I wish tonight.
(What do you wish to share with God?)