Lift Up Your Eyes

Isaiah 40:26

            There is something “different” about lying on your back in the grass and looking up into the sky.  Do you remember doing this as a child?  On a summer day we would lie on our backs in the yard and watch the clouds roll across the sky.  We looked for images in the cloud formations, and on the right kind of day with the right kind of clouds the number of images which kept forming was amazing.  One I still remember to this day was a fully rigged, three-masted sailing ship.  No, I’m not kidding.  It was incredible!

            On a clear, warm summer night, we would spread a blanket on the ground and watch for shooting stars.  (Meteors, if you will, for the scientific minded, but shooting stars for those more poetically inclined).  The sky would usually accommodate us with several sightings - a sudden spot of light, a bright slash across the sky and then gone.  What still amazes me to this day is that they make no sound.

            We tried to identify constellations - the big dipper and Orion were easy.  On some nights we could count the seven sisters.  But this I still remember, too.  At times, you would just stare deep into the blackness between the stars and wonder - How far does it go?  Is there anything else out there?  It always gave me a kind of eerie feeling and even made me feel a little afraid.  There was this sense of being so small.        I have come to believe that these are all “God things.”

            God has designed this universe (at least in part) to put a sense of awe into us, and He has designed our hearts to so respond to His creation.  When we look up and truly see and ponder the vastness of the cosmos and the glories of the sky, we shall be struck with this sense of wonder above and this feeling of our own feebleness below.

            No doubt David experienced much of this when he was out tending the sheep on the hillsides.  Is it any wonder that he wrote: “When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained; What is man that You take thought of him...?” (Psalm 8:3-4)?

            Try to do some looking up in the very near future.  You might be amazed at what you see!

                                                            ><>  Jeff