Cool thoughts from Sam Allbery @ http://allberry.blogspot.com/

Friday, March 28, 2008

Star-gazing


Three things to think about next time you're staring up at the stars:


God's glory


The sky is God's daily blog. Each day the message is unchanging, and yet brought to us in an unending variety of ways. In eloquent silence we have the glory of God proclaimed to us (Ps 19:1). We're reminded of God's invisible qualities - his eternal power and divine nature (Rom 1:20). The stars remind us of the scale and dimensions of his creation. The greatest understatement in history has got to be Gen 1:16 - "He also made the stars", as if a casual aside. They speak of his might and our need to worship him. If we see our smallness before the stars (Ps 8), we should also see his greatness.


God's gospel


Abraham is urged by God to look up at the stars, and even to attempt counting them (Gen 15:5)! Imagining the scene without the faint orange glow of light pollution is hard, but Abraham would have seen the night sky lit up like a Christmas tree - a canopy of numberless twinkling lights. "So shall your offspring be", God says to him. Redeemed humanity really will be a vast number, as hard to imagine as the starry night is to take in, and yet what an encouragement. If it's tough soil which God has given us to work on, we can take great comfort. It will not always be so. Christ's people will not be the handful in a lifeboat, or the straggling survivors huddled in a shelter. Each night-time glance at the heavenlies is an opportunity to believe the gospel again.


God's people


As we strive to live together as God people, struggling to share the mindset of Christ as he went obediently and sacraficially to the cross, purging complaint and argument from our communal life, heading a step at a time toward the blameless lifestyle to which we are called, we shine like stars in the night sky (Phil 2:15). Our unity in Christ, worked out in our relationships with one another, sets us apart as clearly as a bright star against the pitch black of night. Our collective Christ-mindedness makes us the glow-in-the-dark people; our fellowship itself becomes a poweful witness: our illumination in this generation hold out the word of life to it. Our shine is not from better health, better looks, better teeth, better success, but from better minds as we follow the example of Christ and consider one another's needs before our own. [Optional cheesy finale: We become the bright stars that the wise follow to find Jesus :-) ]
Labels: God, Stars