Higher Thoughts

Are you a stargazer?  Not a "likes long walks on the beach" kind, star-crossed and all kinds of melodramatic.  But one who is familiar with the stars, who seeks certain orbs in certain seasons, who knows the bright one's name, who looks hard enough to see their facets of blue and yellow, who stares long enough to see them move and breathe and know the earth has shifted, who covers the glittering one with her thumb and tries to count the gazillion thumbs it would take in light years just to touch its burning surface, who is both afraid and comforted by feeling speck-like small in their inky space, who, hours after lying in the grass, stumbles when she finally stands, adjusting dimensions from light years back to feet and inches, breathing larger breaths.
     Remembering my God created all this wonderment helps me put life in perspective.  The Creator of the universe, who knows all the stars by name, stars I will never see or even know exist, is in control of situations in which I feel utterly helpless and alone.  Charlotte Bronte describes this so well...
     "We know that God is everywhere; but certainly we feel his presence most when His works are on the grandest scale spread before us; and it is in the unclouded night sky, where His worlds wheel their silent course, that we read clearest His infinitude, His omnipotence, His omnipresence.  I had risen to my knees to pray for ___.  Looking up, I, with tear-dimmed eyes, saw the mighty Milky Way.  Remembering what it was- what countless systems there swept space like a soft trace of light- I felt the might and strength of God.  Sure was I of His efficiency to save what He had made.  I turned my prayer into thanksgiving: the Source of Life was also the Savior of spirits.  ___ was safe: __ was God's, and by God would __ be guarded."

Hallelujah.