Last month, while we were backpacking in Yosemite, I braved the dark and cold and mountain lions to shoot some star trails (well, okay, I didn't see any mountain lions, but you never know, right??!). That's where you leave your camera's shutter open for a long time (I've done anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour and a half), and in the finished image, you can see how the stars make streaks across the sky as the earth slowly turns. Here's the view from our campsite by Ten Lakes...
"When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?
Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor." (from Psalm 8)
The stars are just incredible in the Yosemite high country. When I'm up at elevations of 9 or 10 or 11,000 feet, there's just a lot less air in the way! I look up in awe every time we go and I never cease to be amazed at how many pretty twinkling lights there are up there. And each of them is a massive ball of heat that would fry you if you got very close at all (the Sun, for instance, is about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit). What a magnificent display of power and beauty!
"He tells the number of the stars; He calls them all by their names." (Psalm 147)
Have you ever thought about that? There are somewhere around 300 billion stars in the Milky Way. 300,000,000,000 stars. And He has names for them all? Sometimes I have trouble calling my two sisters the right names! He knows billions of stars' names? Not to mention that he MADE them all?!?
When I look at the myriad sparkling lights in the dark sky, they seem to say, "It's okay...He made us...he knows each of our names...and you are far more important to Him." Not only is He powerful enough to make all that, He is good. And with all that goodness, He is watching over you and me.
So, here's something to think about...just a few verses earlier, that same psalm says,
"He heals the brokenhearted, and binds up their wounds."
Each of us has "broken" places in our hearts. Places that need healing. Sometimes we don't realize just where each of those places are, till something painful happens. We fail, or people hurt us, or hard times come. Sometimes something little, like a harsh word or a speeding ticket. Sometimes something big like a business failure or losing a child. But that's where we have an opportunity to invite Jesus into the situation. He can heal that broken place in our heart. All you have to do, to know that he's capable of that, is to look up into the night sky and see his power lavishly displayed. (Maybe that's why he made it so we could see the stars just about every night?)
May you know his power in your heart today.
- Kelsey Schweickert
Discovering beauty...
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