Moon and Stars

 

"Looking at the stars always makes me dream." -Vincent Van Gogh

The stars have been on my mind lately. Maybe it's because I'm planning this backpacking trip and I keep imagining laying down in my tent and watching the crisp stars blinking in the black sky. Feeling comfortably small in comparison to everything else that exists. Feeling that everything insurmountable to me is as tiny as me, and not so important. Forgetting all that and instead being engulfed by constellations and cool night breezes and chirping unseen crickets.

There's this great Psalm (8: 3,4) by David that describes part of this feeling:

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

David was a shepherd before he was a king, so I imagine him sleeping under the stars with his flock nearby many times. He was in awe of how the Creator of such an immense and vast and beautiful universe would bother with tiny, short lived, treacherous, broken people.

It amazes me too, that of all the unworthy things that were created, people are still God's pursuit.

What a love.