Big Bend National Park, Texas
Genesis 1:14
Then God said,
“Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to
separate the day from the night, and they shall serve as signs and for
seasons, and for days and years;
— NASB
I have spent several decades living in the mountains of Western North
Carolina. I love these mountains, but the mountains themselves limit my
view of the sky at our house. There is no way to see a meteor shower, or a
slim chance that a lunar eclipse would be positioned in such a way that I
could watch it from my yard, but it is more than that. There are so many
artificial lights everywhere, that they actually outshine the majesty of the
night sky.
One of the things I was looking forward to out west was the night sky. I
wanted to see the stars against the blackness of the sky. Every night I
would stop and look up at the sky and marvel at its expansive beauty, but
I was not prepared for the intensity and vastness of the stars while we
were in Big Bend National Park. That part of Texas is called Dark Skies
because of the lack of light pollution. A friend had come out to be with me
for that leg of the trip, and we purposefully stayed in the park until the
sun set so that we could stop and absorb the experience on our way back
to the hotel. There were no people on the road leaving the park, just us.
We pulled over and got out. It was breathtaking!
As we stood in the middle of the road and stared into the sky, she said,
“This is disorienting. It looks like we are in the air, flying into a busy
airport, and the city is laid out below us rather than our standing on the
ground looking up.” That is how many stars there were visible to the
naked eye. There were layers of lights, some brilliant and large and some
that looked recessed, but they were all adding to the majesty of the night.
It made me think of how clear God’s glory would be if we turned off the
artificial lights that diminish the pure light being shone into the darkness.
If we remove the barriers that are constricting our view of the sky so that
we can see the beauty on display all around us, wouldn’t it be amazing if
we were disoriented when we saw the layers of man-made lights rather
than the authentic light of the unobstructed sky?
Prayer:
I pray that we make the effort to climb out of our valleys to see the sky
and recognize the difference between the false and the true light. Help us
to seek an unobstructed view of God’s majesty, and let it light illuminate
our lives as Beloved Children of God. Amen.
Wanda Kidd