To Shine Like Stars
Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory in the heavens.
…
When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
What is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?
(Psalm 8:1; 3-4)
It had been a perfect October day the night that I saw the stars. Fall in the Pacific Northwest is a glorious sight to behold, with trees shouting their farewell in magnificent leaves of gold and red which burn against the cool canvas of evergreens. Every fall, I hold my breath and keep my eyes wide open in an attempt to take it all in before the leaves completely abandon the trees after one good rain or one of our famed windstorms. It comes and goes in a flash, and I love every second of it. Driving East on I-90 is a particular treat, because on rainy days a delicate shawl woven of fog and mist graces the shoulders of the mountains. This white ocean of clouds further accentuates the brightly colored trees which dot craggy green mountains like confetti.
This weekend Drew and I drove East on I-90 to celebrate my mother-in-law’s birthday. The endless landscape of mountain, mist, and trees cried “Glory!” and made us want to worship. I tried to take pictures through my rain-spattered window, but eventually had to give up and just rest in the beauty of it all, content simply to look. Where sunbeams shot through just-emptied clouds, rainbows appeared. It was stunning, and Heaven felt near.
The next night, we sat around my in-laws’ outdoor fireplace, reminiscing about the goodness of the day we had shared. It had been another day of beauty-hunting as we drove on roads nestled in miles of untouched forest, searching for the last of Autumn’s colorworks. When we found particularly vivid pockets of trees, we pulled over to take pictures and marvel at the beauty around us. It had been another foggy day, which made everything both clear and mysterious. At some point during our conversation, I felt compelled to walk out from under their porch covering and look at the night sky. The sky had been heavy and grey with clouds, so I wasn’t expecting much. Carefully treading upon the wooden deck slick with rain, I looked up to see Jupiter burning brightly as the king of heaven. Hungrily, my eyes searched the sky to discover even more of the starry host as my eyes adjusted to the night. It was as if they had been waiting for me, whispering “Come and see!”
I stood there staring as Drew and his parents came to join me. I didn’t share that the sight of the stars was healing a wound of shame my heart had taken earlier that day simply by looking at social media and comparing myself to someone else. The sight of stars humbled me with their brilliance and soothed me with their ancient light. I felt the Spirit speaking to that wound, filling it with peace and reminding me “There is so much more to your story—and this is so much bigger than you.” It was all I needed to be content again. As I turned back toward the light of the fire, I took a deep breath of rain-laden, pine-scented, star-tinted air that filled my lungs and made me new.
*
I have loved stars my whole life. No matter what circumstances I’ve been in, there has never been a time that I’ve looked up at the night sky and been disappointed. Every time, my soul is filled with wonder. Every time, I see evidence of God.
There is something about star-gazing that God values, too. The stars serve to remind us of the beauty and glory and creativity of God, but they also help to tell the story of God and his chosen people. When God told Abraham that an entire nation would arise from him and Sarah, he used stars as a visual sign of his covenant:
“Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.”
Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”
(Genesis 15:5)
Later, Joseph’s boastful dream about the moon and eleven stars bowing down to him got him sold into slavery at the hands of his brothers. Dreaming of stars brought Joseph and his entire family of seventy to Egypt, where his eleven brothers did bow down to him, begging for food in a time of famine.
It is in Egypt where the stars of God multiplied until Pharoah enslaved them to dim their shining. But he could not unwrite the story of God. After God raised up Moses to lead his people out of Egypt, Moses uses the language of stars to remind the Israelites of the story God is writing through them:
The LORD your God has multiplied you, and behold, you are this day like the stars of heaven in number. … Your ancestors who went down into Egypt were seventy in all, and now the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars in the sky.
(Deuteronomy 1:10, 10:22)
Once they reach the promised land, the Israelites live with varying degrees of success at responding with faithfulness to God’s faithfulness. Eventually, God sends them into a period of exile but promises to bring his faithful ones back home and restore them. This is what the Psalmist speaks of when he writes,
The Lord builds up Jerusalem;
he gathers the exiles of Israel.
He heals the brokenhearted
and binds up their wounds.
He determines the number of the stars
and calls them each by name.
(Psalm 147:2-4)
In the same way that God knows the name and number of the stars in the sky, God knows the number of his people and the name of each brokenhearted exile. Near the end of their exile, God speaks words of comfort to the Israelites through the prophet Isaiah, reminding them once more of his faithfulness and power to rescue them:
“To whom will you compare me?
Or who is my equal?” says the Holy One.
Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens:
Who created all these?
He who brings out the starry host one by one
and calls forth each of them by name.
Because of his great power and mighty strength,
not one of them is missing.
(Isaiah 40:25-26)
Not one star is missing, not one star goes unnoticed or unnamed by its Creator. When I look at the stars, I feel this. I feel simultaneously known by name and blessedly tiny—one small part of the grand story of God and his love for the world. God proved his undying love for us once and for all when he sent his son into the world, marked by the sign of a star in the heavens. This is the star that sent kings from afar to come and worship this tiny king of the universe.
Can you imagine worshipping a baby? Yet something about the star let the three kings know that one who was far greater than them had come in the humble form of a baby. So, they humbled themselves to worship him.
Perhaps this, then is what it means to be humble: to know and embrace your own smallness and glory as a reflection of the grandeur and glory of God. Humility is having the eyes to see your story as part of a greater whole. The stars teach me something about humility like nothing else in all of creation.
In his letter to the church at Philippi, the apostle Paul urges them to mirror the humility of Christ, who came into our dark world and took on the form of a servant:
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth…
(Philippians 2:8-10)
Because Christ humbled himself the lowest place—death—God exalted him to the highest place.
Paradoxically, it is in humbling ourselves and becoming like Christ that we shine.
Paul continues,
Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure,
children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.
Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life.
(Philippians 2:14-16)
We do not exalt ourselves to shine brighter. Instead, we humble ourselves as we walk in the footsteps of Christ, trusting that the light of Christ in us will shine bright as the stars against the dark forces of evil that are at work in this world.
*
As those who have been grafted into God’s covenant with Israel, their story in the stars is our story, too. When we look at the night sky, we remember:
God speaks through the dazzling beauty of his creation.
The stars are a sign of God’s covenant faithfulness to his children.
Our story is part of a larger story, one that has been told since the beginning of time.
God proved his faithfulness to us by sending his Son, who will come again.
Here is my hope for all of us.
When you next look at the stars, may you see the love and faithfulness of God shining out like diamonds across the vast canvas of night. When you see them, remember that the most important Story of all time is true, that you are part of it, and that it is still being written. Remember that the son of God shone like a star in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome him.
When you look at the stars, see Jesus, who says in Revelation 22:
“I am the Root and the Offspring of David, and the bright Morning Star…
Yes, I am coming soon.”
Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.