(Photo by Casey Horner on Unsplash)
One of my favorite places in the world is Wyoming. The rugged beauty of that state is so overwhelming to me. If I had a free month, and if my wife didn’t mind watching the baby by herself for an extended amount of time, I would drive back to Wyoming and just spend time enjoying the wonderful sights of it all.
Look, if any of you know me, I’ve probably regaled you with talk of how much I love Wyoming before. That’s nothing new to most of you.
One of my favorite things about that state, though, is the endless chasm of stars above you. There are no street lights, no haze, no obstacles which would block your view. It’s just stars as far as you can see.
While it may not be as rugged and isolated as Wyoming, our house now is in a strange part of Athens where it feels like there’s no one else around us at times. We have plenty of neighbors, sure, but our road is just rural enough that, at night, I can sometimes walk out on the back porch, turn all the lights off, and just look up at the sky and imagine that I’m the only breathing soul for miles around.
The effect is especially lovely in winter when the haze of warm, summery days has dissipated and the sky is a perfect contrast of black, vacuous emptiness and the pin pricks of oscillating white or flashing blue.
Just last night, in the sub-freezing temperatures, I walked onto the back porch after midnight with no shoes or socks on and just looked up at the sky. As cold as it was, the haze isn’t gone quite yet. There were still wispy shades of gray visible in the air. Overall, though, it was an unparalleled beauty.
What amazes me about the stars is that the longer you look at the night sky without the pollution of other distracting lights, the more stars you can see. The hidden, unsung constellations start to come into view.
Were it not below freezing last night or, more accurately, had I been wearing shoes, I could have stayed out there for hours just enjoying the simple, engaging beauty of the starlit sky.
I could go into the astronomy of it all and the physics of why we see more stars the longer we stare at the sky, but I’d hate to bore poor Walt Whitman.
Suffice it to say that you should stare at the stars more often.
When I was standing on the back porch last night, though, two thoughts came into my mind. First was this scene from Men in Black, which I still think is one of the most beautiful scenes Hollywood has ever produced, even if it is from a silly action comedy. (More than 20-year old spoilers abound)
I’m mostly just referring to the part where Will Smith’s J neuralizes Tommy Lee Jones’ K. If you remember, K’s comments about the stars echo what his former partner said in the very first scene of the movie. I have always thought that this scene was just shockingly lovely given the rest of the movie. I mean, there’s a scene where a full-grown man is swallowed alive by a giant cockroach. And Will Smith is constantly over-surprised by things. There’s nothing serious about this movie except for one really wonderful scene.
The second thought that came to my mind, though, is far more important than a classic Hollywood action comedy about aliens and men in achromatic suits.
I was reminded of when God appears before Abram (hereafter referred to as Abraham) in a vision and tells him to count the stars.
Some time later, the Lord spoke to Abram in a vision and said to him, “Do not be afraid, Abram, for I will protect you, and your reward will be great.”
But Abram replied, “O Sovereign Lord, what good are all your blessings when I don’t even have a son? Since you’ve given me no children, Eliezer of Damascus, a servant in my household, will inherit all my wealth. You have given me no descendants of my own, so one of my servants will be my heir.”
Then the Lord said to him, “No, your servant will not be your heir, for you will have a son of your own who will be your heir.” Then the Lord took Abram outside and said to him, “Look up into the sky and count the stars if you can. That’s how many descendants you will have!”
And Abram believed the Lord, and the Lord counted him as righteous because of his faith.
Genesis 15:1-6 (NLT) — Emphasis Mine
When you first look at the stars, you think, “Wow. That’s a lot of stars!” But if you look long enough, you could probably count them, right? I mean, there’s only probably a couple thousand that are visible at any one given time.
Let’s assume you could mark them out one-by-one and keep an accurate count. That’s a hefty assumption to begin with, of course, since it isn’t really possible, but let’s just assume the absurd.
You might could count the few thousand visible stars in the night sky, but then two things are problematic here. First, the longer you stare at the sky, the more stars will be visible. So the number changes and grows. The second problem is just how many stars aren’t actually visible to you.
Gee, Bob. You spent $10 Billion to stare at nothing? I can do that for a quarter! (Photo by Drew Graham on Unsplash)
In 1995, the director of the Space Telescope Science Institute, the unimpressively named Bob Williams, pointed Hubble at a spot of blank sky for 100 hours. People said he was putting his career and the future of satellite astronomy in jeopardy with his “risky stunt,” but he did it anyway. It’s good to be the director.
His risk ended up producing what is now known as the “Hubble Deep Field,” one of the single-most important scientific photographs of the late-20th Century.
It also shows us that there are probably more than 50 Billion galaxies in the known universe. Do you know how many stars are in a single galaxy?
There are easily more stars in the universe than there are people who have ever lived and died.
So to say that Abraham was incapable of counting the stars is an understatement. Not only is it physically impossible to count the ones we’re capable of seeing, but to then put even a gross estimation on the number of stars we don’t see is laughably foolish.
What God was showing Abraham in that moment wasn’t just the number of children he would father. Children with their right arms, their left arms, right legs, and left legs. God was showing Abraham the enormity of His promises.
When Abraham looked up into the sky, every star he saw was a direct promise from God.
And the longer Abraham watched and stared, the more promises from God he would have seen.
When we seek after the Lord, and honestly open His Word to seek His promises, the more of God’s promises and personality we come to know. Every page of the Bible is dripping with the truth of God’s promises.
Ivey and I decided to read through the Bible in order a while back and, though we’ve been slower than hoped, I am so glad that we’ve done this. Reading the Bible page-by-page like this has opened my eyes to a new perspective on Scripture I haven’t ever seen before. Reading it like a novel, almost, has really helped me to see the overarching story of the Bible.
Sure, things are a bit thrown off because I already know the ending, but when you encounter the story of the Bible and God’s love for His people through Jesus Christ like this, it makes those promises even sweeter. Knowing just how God plans to fulfill those promises by sacrificing His son for us, and for those who did not fully understand what God was going to do, it makes reading the Bible this way quite special.
I hope to write about that more in the future, but that’s not why I’m here now.
About two months ago, my buddy Rylan and I went camping in the north Georgia mountains. It was beautiful and it was the perfect weather, except for one tiny thing. It was cloudy.
The part of that trip I’d been most excited about was getting up into the mountains and seeing the stars unimpeded by the few lights that are around our house. Unfortunately, it was not to be since the clouds were everywhere. There was never more than a mild pinch of a tear in the cloud cover after dark, so we saw no stars.
Hey there, buddy. You, uh, wanna stay over there? Thanks. (Actual photo of the thing that almost killed me.)
I did see a black widow, though. On a branch I was about to pick up. Because I touched its web.
I guess my point here is that two things are usually necessary for us to see God’s promises in the Word. First, we need to be looking for them. If we don’t look up, a la Tommy Lee Jones’ character for most of his life, then we miss the stars. If we don’t look to the Word, then we miss God’s promises. Second, we have to get the other junk out of the way.
Yes, this metaphor falls apart when you consider that I literally drove up to the mountains to look at the stars, but no metaphor is perfect. There was still something in the way. For you, that something in the way could be anything. It could be an attitude about God. It could be some disobedience or sin in your life. It could be as basic as the fact that you just don’t have a real relationship with God.
It’s not my place to say. What is my place to say is that, if you can’t see God’s promises in the Word, then you just aren’t looking close enough. Open your Bible. Read the words printed there on the page. You’ll see the promises of God come to life soon enough.
And if that’s not working, just look to the stars. Number them, if you can. Because God can. And He can do infinitely more than that in your life if you let Him.