A Stary Sky

Welcome! I am starting blogging again today.  I’m planning to post a couple times a week with thoughts on life, ministry, and scripture.  If you are new here, you can also look at some of my old posts—most of them are related to my two internships during seminary.

The inky black sky was thick with thousands of bright stars.  Possibly more stars than I have ever seen in my life.  Certainly more than I had seen in a long time.  And that was just walking from my campsite to the bathhouse on a camping trip to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. 

I stood in the campground road and took in the stars.  They took my breath away.  As I curled up in my tent that night I was reminded of Abraham.  God promised to make his descendants more than the stars in the sky.  It must have seemed impossible to Abram, looking into the night sky (in a place with no light pollution!) that he and Sarai would have any descendants.  They were old and childless.  They didn’t have one descendant, much less as many as the stars in the sky.  But God kept his promise to Abram and Sarai.  He gave them one descendant who became a whole nation, as many as the stars in the sky.  Throughout scripture, God does seemingly impossible and improbable things.  He parted the Red Sea so his people could pass through safely.  He used a childless foreign widow to become the king of Israel’s great-grandmother.  He changed the heart of a violent man who persecuted Christians. 

Thinking about Abram and the stars that night, I was comforted.  In the midst of the uncertainties of my life, of all of my questions about what the future might hold, the stary sky was a reminder that God keeps his promises.  God kept his promises to Abram.  God will keep his promises to me.  A promise to be with me.  A promise to love me with unfailing love.  A promise to give me hope and a future.
  

  

I didn't get a picture of the stars, but here's one of my favorite pictures of my Sleeping Bear Dunes trip (at Empire Bluff).