Picture the scene….

It’s night-time. A young boy is lying on his back in the fields, staring up into the darkness. Electricity hasn’t been invented yet, so the light display above his head is nothing less than spectacular. He gazes at a million twinkling stars. Some are huge, some are tiny. They make patterns against black, and the boy traces them with his finger. An enormous, white, round moon shines down. The boy squints and tries to make out the images he can see on its mysterious surface.

This is how the boy falls to sleep…it’s the same ritual for David night after night. It’s what caused him to ask the universal human question Who am I? It’s what would prompt him to pen these words:

When I consider your heavens,
    the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
    which you have set in place,
 what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
    human beings that you care for them? Psalm 8

And think about it… a tiny boy, under a myriad of stars, and the vastness in between. Wouldn’t you be prompted to ask that question too?

Who am I?

But the trouble is, I don’t fall asleep under the stars. I fall asleep in front of the TV. I don’t have time to contemplate the mysteries of mankind or the greatness of God, because I’m too busy contemplating the Christmas catalogs or the cyber specials.

But if I did have time, perhaps I’d find that I’m far from insignificant. As small as I am in the grand scheme of things, maybe I am part of something bigger… a tiny thread in a complex tapestry; a thin, invisible brush stroke on a colossal canvas; one inaudible note in a grand symphony; one single letter in God’s autobiography.

Maybe you are too.

And so I keep looking up, like David did long ago, like the magi who came from the east or the shepherds of Bethlehem. Because it’s always when we look up that we are led to God; that we realize how a far-away star can somehow connect us to the One who made it…

despite the vastness, or the darkness, or the emptiness in between.