Our family spent a night in the forest far from city lights. The best part of that is seeing more stars than you knew were there. I remembered a mountain getaway, years before, when I bundled my small, sleepy children and carried them one at a time into the cold, clear night to show them the immense painting usually obscured by nightlights, traffic lights, and city aura. “I want to show you something outside. Your Heavenly Father made those,” I whispered to each blanket-bundled love with our faces starward. “The Bible says He calls each one of them by name. That’s a lot of names. But He never forgets, because He knows each star. And He knows your name, too.”
On this night, my children much older now, everyone had settled in and drifted off to sleep with that perfect exhaustion that comes from being outdoors all day.
I turned out the last of the lights and slipped into bed next to my husband who was almost asleep himself. Several minutes of tossing made me sure the call wasn’t to be dismissed. “Ross, I have to go outside and see the stars again.”
I feel rather illiterate when I look at His complex sky. Worse than a fish staring at a Rembrandt masterpiece, I surely miss so much of this artistry I can’t read. But I could see Orion, running north with bow drawn. And behind me the Big Dipper, overturned, spilling its star song on the land below.
Alone, with no fear, I stood in intimate awe of Him for a long, long time. Who is this God who creates such majestic handiwork and yet turns His attention to me and knows my name? This King loves me, and I am speechless.
“When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have set in place, what is man that You take thought of him, and the son of man that You care for him?” Psalm 8:3-4.
And yet He does, by name.