Space. The home of planets, stars and cosmic dust.
I love taking a few minutes every now and then to just stop and look at the stars. I don't do it as often as I should. I'm usually in a hurry to get someplace - these days, it's anywhere inside where it's warm.
I live in a small enough town that the street lights don't overpower the starlight. I've been known to stop at the top of the stairs to my apartment building and just look at the stars, trying to pick out constellations I recognize. I can usually see Orion and the Big Dipper. Sometimes I can find Cassiopeia - only because she looks nothing like she should.
The stars have fascinated more people than me. Sometimes it's fun to imagine ancient people lying on the ground in a meadow, looking up at the stars and saying "Hey, that looks like a bear" or "There's Pegasus. Don't you see him?" Those people must have had incredible imaginations to picture Queen Cassiopeia in a series of stars that's shaped like a W.
I think we're intrigued by the stars because they're so far away. Trying to picture how big they really are when all we see is the pinpricks of light boggles the mind. Well, mine at least. They show us how big the universe is and how insignificant we are. Yes, even LeBron James, Peyton Manning and Tom Cruise are not that important in the grand scheme of things. I know we think they are and they think they are, but the stars remind us that they're not. And we're not.
It's a good reminder when we start thinking we're all that and a bag of chips. And when I think about the God Who created those stars and Who is even bigger than they are, filling all the space between us and the end of the universe (wherever that is) - how awesome is He! And the fact that He cares about someone as unimportant and small as I am? Incredible.
So thanks, stars, for being so beautiful and so challenging. And thanks, God, for making them for us to enjoy.
