stars

Ruthie wakes up early and stumbles down to the living room with her light-up ladybug. Her little chubby fingers hold up the favorite bedtime friend to project stars on the ceiling above us. Amethyst light through star holes cast the dreamy image of a night sky above me. But it is 6 am and I’m about to endure a challenging morning.  How I wish I could just go back to sleep. Sleep away the hard stuff of life.

I look at the half-moon shape. I’d love to read Goodnight Moon to her now…like we did a couple of years ago.  Before the unknown challenges.  The burdens that weigh on our shoulders. I’d love to go back to some sense of innocence.

I try to grasp in my mind something from God’s Word about the night sky. A comforting Psalm. Desperately seeking a word from The Word that will comfort me without much effort.

My mind fails.

Oh wait…there is the passage about how Abraham’s descendants will be as numerous as the stars in the sky right? I’m one of them. I am part of an answer to a promise.

My online dictionary defines a star as: “A self-luminous celestial body consisting of a mass of gas held together by its own gravity in which the energy generated by nuclear reactions in the interior is balanced by the outflow of energy to the surface, and the inward-directed gravitational forces are balanced by the outward-directed gas and radiation pressures.”

I laugh at how we simplify in our minds the so very complex.  We begin as children. We take these fiery balls of gas so very far away – a distance our mind cannot possibly take hold of and we make them into shapes with five points and we cast them on our walls.

We go to great lengths to do this.  We make toys that show light through star-holes or we buy little glow in the dark stars and glue them to our ceilings.

Like little gods we make our own sky and look up and consider making a wish on them. We wish. Ha! Wish on a five pointed human-hand-cut shape. All the while…the real thing is out there. Way up there. Burning. Telling of God’s real glory. Pointing us to our one true hope….the real Creator.  The wish upon all wishes. The ultimate wish come true. A God who is rescuing us from this earth. .

Even though it’s true—God is rescuing us – it is a bit more complex than that isn’t it?  The rescue plan to make us one of the many descendants of Abraham.

He rescues us from the dominion of darkness that brings sickness, tears, abuse, hurt and death. We endure aspects of these things as we live out this life waiting for His “The End” to the rescue saga.

Each one of us lives a complex web of varying levels of hardship.

At the same time, we experience the beauty and preciousness of life on earth.

If we are in Christ, we experience an unexplainable joy and abundant life with Him despite the hardships.

It’s anything but normal.  But then again are rescue plans ever normal?

“We were dead in our transgressions.”

The Christ child was born in a messy stable.

One of those gas balls in the sky lead the way.

The child grew up and endured the hardships of life also.

He endured the hurt of people he loved not trusting His heart.

Mocked. Spit on. Beard plucked.

He was handed over to Pontius Pilot.

Crucified. Died. Buried.

Rose from the grave. Showed Himself.

He now shows Himself to us…drawing us to Himself. Often using the complex web of varying levels of hardship to do that.

The complexities of this rescue plan are deeper than this.  My feeble early morning mind cannot take it much further but there are more details aren’t there?

There is so much more happening in this rescue plan than my little Jesus storybook explains in one night to my children.

The complex simplified.

How can our minds truly grasp what God is doing and has done?

My hope in pondering this today is to find myself in a place like Job. In the midst of disappointment and challenges to simply go before my God and eventually get to the point where I am not questioning but simply…standing…in awe.

Or perhaps I should sit or even lay down.

Just…close my mouth.

“I put my hand over my mouth.  I spoke once, but I have no answer – twice, but I will say no  more” (Job 40:4-5).

“I know that you can do all things; no plan of yours can be thwarted.  You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my counsel without knowledge?’ Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know” (Job 42:2-3).

Photo from: wallsave.com

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