When I consider the works of your hands...

Sorry I haven't posted in ages.  College life has been nuts and I interned this past summer so I didn't have a lot of time for blogging.  I hope to be more faithful at posting from now on.

So last night I was walking to my play practice with my girlfriend and I happened to glance upward and I was once again blown away by the beauty of the stars.  Ever since the dawn of history, mankind has been fascinated by the stars. 

We desire to see them and study them.  Since the creation of the telescope, we have been scanning the heavens and more and more, and are blown away by their intricacies and wonder.  Once the Hubble Space Telescope was created, we are able to see farther out into space, in more and more detail, seeing countless wonders in the heavens. 

The heavens have been the inspiration for so many of man's greatest works of literature.  My favorite poem, written by the great American poet Walt Whitman, is called When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer.

When I heard the learn’d astronomer;

When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;

When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;

When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,

How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;

Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself

In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,

Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

That poem captures my feelings about life, especially being a college student.  Sometimes we just need to be silent and bask in the glory of what we are learning about, not the facts and figures.  Sorry, that was a bit of a rabbit trail.
The Bible speaks much about the stars.  It calls them the sons of God, it speaks in the book of Job about God leading them in their place.  One of my favorite passages about the stars however, is in the Psalms.  In Psalm 8, David writes:

¹ Lord, our Lord,
    how majestic is your name in all the earth!

You have set your glory
    in the heavens.
² Through the praise of children and infants
    you have established a stronghold against your enemies,
    to silence the foe and the avenger.
³ When I consider your heavens,
    the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
    which you have set in place,
⁴ what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
    human beings that you care for them?

⁵ You have made them a little lower than the angels
    and crowned them with glory and honor.
⁶ You made them rulers over the works of your hands;
    you put everything under their feet:
⁷ all flocks and herds,
    and the animals of the wild,
⁸ the birds in the sky,
    and the fish in the sea,
    all that swim the paths of the seas.

⁹ Lord, our Lord,
    how majestic is your name in all the earth!

So next time you see the stars, think about how amazing they are, and think that even though they are so mighty and beautiful, He chose to love us.  He chose to make His dwelling with us.  He chose to die for us.  Think about how He loves you enough to die for you.  Let that thought blow you away.