On night when the kids went to meet with Dave, there was no campfire! Dave was sitting in the dark. The kids asked if he was out of firewood or out of matches. Dave told them that he had firewood and matches, but he did not want a fire that night because it was a beautiful night to look at the stars. The sky was clear, and the stars were especially bright.
Dave showed the kids several constellations and they were even able to see part of the milky way. Stargazing is a great way to focus on God’s majesty and awesomeness. Suddenly it happened…a streak of light flashed across the sky. The kids could not believe what they had just seen, it was a shooting star! Some of the kids had never seen a shooting star before, and they asked Dave if it really was a star falling out of the sky. Dave explained that it was not a star, it was a meteor burning up as it came into the earth’s atmosphere. A meteor is usually a chunk of rock that is in space, but it can be space junk created by humans such as pieces of metal from spaceships or old satellites.
Dave told the kids about some special times of stargazing that he had experienced over the years. Once he had been with a group of high school students on a canoe trip, and they were camping on a sandbar in the middle of the river. There was no light anywhere around and there was no moon, so the stars were very clear. There was no wind, so the river was completely calm with no ripples in the water. The water was so still that the group could see stars reflected off the water. When they looked to the horizon they could not tell where the sky ended, and the water began. It was truly an awesome moment!
Another incredible time of stargazing was in the fall. Dave was with another group of high school students. This time they were at a camp and the weather was starting to get colder. The sky was completely clear and there was no moon. The group of kids were out looking at the stars when suddenly they saw something incredible! There were pale green lights in the sky! The lights were rippling and waving throughout the sky, sometimes they were bright and sometimes they almost faded away. The kids were seeing the northern lights! None of the kids in the group had seen the northern light before, usually a person would have to be a lot further north to see these lights, but on this night the conditions had been just right so that the northern lights could be seen much further south than normal.
Stargazing is an awesome experience. When a person looks at all the wonders in the sky, we see a little bit of the greatness of God, and we feel how small we really are in this universe that God has made. It is good for us to be reminded of the greatness and awesomeness of God.
In the Bible in Isaiah 55:8-9 it says:
“My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord. “And My ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so My ways are higher than your ways and My thought higher than your thoughts.”
Stargazing reminds us that God is in control, and He has a plan for each of us and a plan for the whole universe. Nothing surprises God and He makes no mistakes. When we go through times when we do not understand why things are happening the way they are happening, we need to trust God and let Him do what He knows is best. Someday when we arrive in heaven, everything that we have gone through in this life on earth will make sense.
God knows what He is doing, trust Him!