Looking at the Stars

Last week was the Perseid Meteor Shower. It was a shooting star filled event with as many as 100 meteors per hour. I missed it.

I had intentions of seeing it, but in reality they didn’t play out. Scott was out of town for work all last week, and so of course, everything fell apart. I’ll spare you the details, but suffice it to say between our toddler and two dogs it involved 3 doctor trips, vomit, blood, a sleepless night, police helicopters circling the neighborhood, and a toddler appendicitis scare on top of cooking, cleaning, working and being mom. So I missed the shooting stars.

Everything is fine (and of course perfectly peaceful this week with Scott back home). But in the midst of all that, I probably missed more than the meteor shower. I’m sure I missed noticing the little stars, the bright spots of the week as well; a wonderful evening with a dear friend, family nearby to help, a fabulous pediatrician who called me right back after hours, and a very positive Meet the Teacher day at Mother’s Day Out for a little one who was not looking forward to going back to school. Barely counting these, though I certainly counted everything that went wrong.

Still, I was disappointed to have missed the meteor shower, but looking at the stars didn’t make it to the top of the list last week. Isn’t it funny how often it takes leaving your normal circumstances, going camping, or to the mountains, or somewhere else to actually look at the stars? On just normal, average nights, the stars are out for us to marvel at. They’re always there. Well, truly, I suppose they’re always changing, with the light in perpetual motion, but there nonetheless. But we often miss seeing them, unless somewhere outside our normal routine. I think that’s what makes a meteor shower so fascinating, is you actually get to see the motion. But we could look at the stars nearly any night. Now yes, I know that the stars are more brilliant in remote places. Places that are unfamiliar, set apart from our normal location and expectations. I think God does too.

“The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.” Genesis 12

God had called Abram to leave a good life, a stable life, a predictable life and pick up everything and move so that he would someday have offspring. And just three chapters later, he finds himself still without children in a place very different than he imagined he’d be. And just as Abraham has finished complaining (or perhaps he’s not really finished yet, am I right?) it says …

(God) took him outside and said, "Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.”  Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”   Genesis 15

Abraham was trying to figure out his own situation, how he might indeed see the promise of children, by having a child with another woman, because after all, surely there must have been a mistake; No children by now, not at all the plan. I imagine he supposed the story just wasn’t going to work out, wasn’t going to have a happy ending, and he’d better salvage what he could, find some way to settle with what he’d been dealt.

And God pulls him outside, away from all that is present and pressing and logical and practical. Pulls him out from the only solutions that seem feasible… to remind him of the promises. Promises so much larger than any circumstance Abraham could imagine, so much bigger than his present situation.

And God says, step back from that, don’t just not look for the simple solutions in circumstances, but it something much bigger. Don’t try to jam all the puzzle pieces

together into some makeshift solution. There are pieces to come that you don’t even know. Look at the stars.

When we feel out of our normal place, like there’s not any way forward that we had imagined, that’s when God wants to show us the stars. Or perhaps sometimes God pulls us away from the glare of everyday life, intentionally calling us to somewhere unfamiliar so we can indeed see them; the promises of God laid in brilliant tapestry before us. Reminding us that there are hopes and dreams and futures that we can barely fathom.

It’s as though God says, look, the only way I can explain this is to have you look at the stars. That’s the only way you could start to see how vast and wide and eternal are my promises for you. That’s the only way to explain to you how in fact they are already in motion, with light and possibility careening toward you, though it seems like everything is just standing still. There is movement, hope, promise. Though it may seem light years away. Though it may not make sense just yet. That’s ok.

A writer that I recently started following (Sarah Bessey) wrote “I think sometimes we rush the narrative construction of our seasons.”  I’ve been thinking about that a lot. We’re so quick to try to tie up all the loose ends of our lives,

when really God is saying, I’m still weaving with that end. Though it may seem frayed, once it’s woven in you’ll see the pattern.

You wouldn’t be able to grasp all of it at once, it’s too much to wrap your arms around, or pin down in a tidy plan, but look up. Because your sky is bright with promise. Because just as the light from those stars started nearly forever ago before you actually see it, so did the promises. Promises that are unfolding over the course of years, of lifetimes.

If it seems slow, it’s because you don’t know how remarkable they truly are. If it seems dim, it’s just because there are clouds in the way now. But in fact, the universe is blanketed with reminders that you are mine and that I don’t forget my promises. Look at the stars, God says.  Though the night seems still, there is much in motion that you don’t see.

And then, God’s hoping we might, at the same time, be stars—that our faith in the promises, however far off, might be bright spots in dark nights that cause others to look up.