Midnight, moonlight, and stars

I grew up in the country. The real country–I knew what it was to sit on the front porch or my parents screened-in porch and look toward town and its twinkling lights. I’ve stood in my parents’ living room and listened to a siren screaming out of Bernie on it’s way to the nearest hospital and watched its progress up Highway 25 until it disappeared behind the cornfields. I spent my childhood riding home from various locations at night, staring out the window looking for falling stars and trying to identify the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper, and various other constellations my brother could point out with ease, but they usually evaded my recognition. Even now, when I go home, I always take a moment to stare up into the sky and take attendance of the stars and constellations that decorate the expanse. I’m always mystified by how much darker it seems in the countryside of Missouri compared to Nashville and overjoyed by the generous sprinkling of stars I never see in the city.

Last night I was driving back from a work related meeting in Louisville. It was late, almost midnight, and we were stuck in traffic for reasons we couldn’t figure out. And there, in the middle of Interstate 65 in a red rental car, I was reminded of my childhood. I gazed out the windows at the night sky and was overwhelmed by the sheer massiveness of it. The stars were hiding behind the clouds, and I couldn’t see them, but I knew they were there–the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper that my Grandpa Marion had so often pointed out with ease, the little bits of light that dot the sky and twinkle like Christmas lights and never fail to make me happy.

I haven’t taken much time to look at the sky lately–or at anything other than myself and my problems lately. But last night, in a borrowed car on a crowded interstate, I remembered and I worshiped our Creator. And I knew in that moment, that what He had created was good–and that I’d spent far too mch time ignoring the signs of Himself He’d placed in front of me all this time.