In my opinion, there are few things as powerful as a night sky. And not just any night sky, either , but the kind you see when you’re laying on your back in the middle of nowhere. The kind that takes your breath away. Through each speck of glitter thrown across the blue velvet dome above, such skies whisper to us of something more real – more eternal – than almost anything we can find here on earth.
The stars possess of kind of light which the sun and moon don’t. A light which wouldn’t be strong enough on its own – and yet we can’t imagine the night sky without it. A sparkling, etheral, mysterious light. A light that’s beyond us. I think there’s a reason that the Bible mentions stars so often. They’re the clearest fingerprints of God I know of.
I experienced a night like that while in Ireland, sitting on the top of a hill after a night hike (This experience is described in an earlier post called Shooting Stars). That’s the night I was thinking of when I wrote this poem the other day. I was also thinking of Abraham from the Bible, and how one night sky changed his perpective forever (read about that in Genesis!).
“Look up, and number the stars.”
To have the freedom of a star.
To soar across the sky.
To traverse the corridors of heaven.
To shame the sun’s consuming brilliance with silent dignity.
To add to a light that sparkles like no other – knowing you could do nothing on your own.
To have heard the echoes of angel voices on that holy night so long ago.
To be the traces of God’s fingerprints.
To be called out by Him night after night.
To glide across the mists of dark air.
To get lost in the Milky Way.
To remind those who take time to look,
Like Abraham, David, and Job,
That the One who made them knows their names.
Their hearts.
Their voices.
Their joys.
Their fears.
To watch them discover in your unearthly beauty,
His greatness and His love.
Our God is a consuming fire,
And our God is the whisper which climbs down to us through the stars.
