It is the time of year for the Perseid meteor shower.  The forecast for viewing has been good – cloudless night skies with no moon reflection to deal with that would outshine the meteors.  The reading material says closer to dawn is the best viewing – so sometime after 4 am.  

 

Well – I am not getting up early to go to work – so why not interrupt my sleep and head out to the yard and see what I can see.  

 

My DH got up before me – at about 3:30 and left for the backyard. I dragged myself on out of bed, wrapped up in a robe, got a blanket and a “bug fan” and joined him.  I climbed into my zero gravity recliner and started watching.  Some sites said you might have to watch the sky for 20-30 minutes before seeing anything.   That is  a long time. After switching location – out into the grass with the mosquito’s, we were able to see a few of the “shooting stars”.  In the wise words of my DH – he said he wasn’t so sure we were watching a meteor shower – but rather a meteor sprinkle!

 

He went back to bed.

 

I stayed, thinking I would give it a few more minutes.

 

Soon I was joined by our 20 year old son, you know the one that is like my jasmine plant (see Naked Ladies and Jasmine). Over the next hour we watched together, had some great conversation – about nothing of any real importance – just great conversation.  Just great to be talking with him. Just great that he joined me.  Slowly rebuilding the strength of this “plant” so that it can recognize its resources and bloom. And sighting  a number of those “shooting stars”.  No pressure – just building relationship.

 

As I lay there, watching the sky, a few things occurred to me.  This one I will share with you.  Remember – this is my lane….you are free to express your “lane” if you disagree.

 

I was ever so gently reminded that the heavens and the earth were created. That there is just no accident in what we see around us – on a “nature” level.  That God, in His heaven, did something so complex, that we just will never be able to dissect it or completely understand it.  

 

Even when we try. And we – the human race – tries to understand it all the time. Tries to explain it away.  I was thinking that it seems easier to do this dissecting and explaining and understanding with the earth portion of the creation.  Because we inhabit the earth.  We can look around daily and see the interactions of all that makes up the earth.  We can work on explaining how those interactions process.  We can come up with really good theories. We can also impact the creation that we live within.  We can modify it by our actions.  We have some control over what we touch daily and it becomes too familiar to us. This familiarity often shields us from the wonder of the world we live in. 

 

Not so much for the average person with the “heavens” portion of creation.  

 

As I looked at the sky, it became evident to me that there is so much more to be seen than what we see with the naked eye. There is so much we cannot see up there. As you stare into the dark sky, there are just so many stars.  So many that you never really see. So many that come in and out of focus.  Of course there are the bright ones – the twinkling ones.  They are clearly seen on a regular basis.  It is all those unseen ones.  

And for the most part, at least at this point, we really cannot manipulate this backdrop in the sky. This portion of creation is just out of our reach. We need to respond to it instead of making it respond to us.  It begs us to come to terms with it’s “createdness” so to speak – not with how we may have altered the creation. It is not like trees, or crops or humans, that we have figured out how to modify – or obliterate – but it is creation in a more raw form.

 

For me this is a small aspect faith.  Looking at something, not understanding it, but believing it just the same.  We live expressing faith everyday, in small ways and sometimes in big ways.  Last night was just a reminder of how faith works for me.  How I can look at something and simply accept it for just being there.  To not want to alter it – to not want to explain it -but to allow what God has set in motion to have its own natural sequence take place. To just accept that God somehow created all those stars and began the star process. And then I was able to see the beauty of the debris.

 

Isn’t that just like God-to take something that is actually trash and make it beautiful.  

 

So beautiful, that we rename it to shooting stars.  And while we know that there are these “stars” in the sky each night, it is interesting to me that the darker the sky and my surroundings, the brighter the stars and their activity becomes to me.  Sort of like our lives at times… we know God is there, but sometimes it takes the dark patches for us to notice the beauty that surrounds us from Him.  

We all have dark skies in our lives.  But if we take a moment – 20 or 30 minutes for our eyes to adjust to the darkness -you might find God’s gift of creation for you.  I saw a couple last night – gifts, not stars.  Take an hour and stare up at the darkness and catch a shooting star – you may be tired on Thursday, but you may know just a little bit more about yourself and God’s creation.

 

 

Leave me a comment on what you “see” tonight -should you venture into this part of creation.