“The heavens are telling the glory of God,
and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.”
Psalm 19:1, NRSV
When my father was a boy, he would ride his bike down along Kirby and Main St. and watch the construction of the Astrodome. Imagine walking into the Dome for the first time when it opened in 1965 and looking up. The roof wasn’t a roof like any other old building — it was a second sky, completely covering the field and all the stands. For the first time, it was possible to watch baseball in a new enclosed environment free from heat, rain and mosquitos. It’s no wonder the Astrodome was called the “eighth wonder of the world.”
Now, compare that to the real sky. The Astrodome’s roof seems a little less impressive, doesn’t it?
How often do you look at the sky? How often do you consider its sheer size?
With the proliferation of artificial light in Houston, we rarely get a chance to see the night sky the way it is supposed to look. You must drive far out of town to see what our great-grandparents could see every night — swirling galaxies, constellations — all visible with the human eye. I’ve sometimes wondered if part of the problem that so many of us have with feeling disconnected from the world is that we often don’t sit under the stars enough to get a sense of how majestic our universe is. Certainly, gazing at the sky is the exact opposite of how we are tempted to spend our hours — hunched over small screens imbibing streams of disconnected data while our own darkened reflection hovers in the background just out of sight.
David tells us that the heavens declare God’s glory. They aren’t there to make you and me feel insignificant — they are there to tell us about who is significant. For Christians, the grand spectacle of the sky is a reminder that, though we are small and (on our own) insignificant, God — the same God who spoke the stars into existence — counts us as significant and as recipients of His grace and love. The stars of the night sky, the dazzling light of the sun at midday and the colors of the sunrise and sunset proclaim to us the goodness of our God who has made all things.
Almighty Creator, who filled the sky with stars, fill us with Your light so that we might shine with the radiance of Christ’s glory, that He may be known, worshiped and obeyed to the ends of the Earth; through Christ our Lord. Amen.
