"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper
you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. "
-- Jer. 29:11
When we look upon a starry night sky, the starlight that reaches
our eyes actually shows the stars as they "were" hundreds of years
ago. We see them not as they really are, but as they "were"
when the starlight began its journey a long time ago. The farther out in space
we look, the farther back in time we see.
It means that at the very exact moment of gazing at a constellation, some of
these stars may have already drifted to different locations, some of them
may
have exploded and are gone, and some new stars could be sprouting - all these
could be simultaneously happening billions of miles away as
we gaze at the "echo" of how they were thousands of years ago. We probably
wont live that long to "see" most of these changes because our informant,
we call "light" that has just emanated
from that star has only begun to travel from millions of miles away to bring
us information, and will probably take years to reach earth. The
speed of light is 186,000 miles per second. - this is the fastest feedback that
we can get when observing our physical world. The light from the sun - our very own star - takes around eight minutes to reach us.
We actually dont perceive anything in "real-time" because we are constrained by the time lag it takes
for light as well as other signals to reach our senses and ultimately our perceptions.
Such phenomenon is a good analogy to show how we sense God's work in our life : it takes some time for us to see His grand masterplan unfold. Often we dont really understand why things are
happening to our life, and we only see our own "now" and "here"
slice of our world, only seeing things as they appear to be, and oblivious
to the fact that God has done - and is continually doing - something great in
advance.
Bad times seems to make no sense, only because we have to patiently wait awhile till we see what God intended for us after all, and then we are shaken back to our senses as His plan finally unfolds right before our very eyes. Sometimes it takes huge time frames - such as a whole lifetime, and large distances, for us to eventually realize and fathom His plans. The good times that happen to our lives often passes by un-thanked for and is quickly forgotten, but for the worst accidents and tragedies in our lives, no matter how hard we ask for the reasons why, we may never really understand at all why they ever happened. Its of the secret things of sovereign God that we must learn to trust.
"I dont know where the sunbeams end and the starlight begins. Its all a mystery."
- The Flaming Lips
God always moves ahead of us...He is always "previous", He has a wonderful
plan for our life, and He is constantly at work on it. He shines us blessings even
before we know it, or not know it.
Stargazers often travel to a quiet place far away from the busy city, where there are no city lights to obscure oncoming starlight from the heavens. It is where the beauty of the stars can clearly be seen and beheld.
We actually have that place somewhere in our hearts that is free from distractions where we too can gaze at all the starlight blessings
that has shone throughout the years of our life, and see those that are pouring
right before our very eyes, and anticipate those that are still on their way. Just like a stargazer, we can visit that place in our heart
where we can see how wonderful life really is, for it is a place where we can behold how magnificent God really is.
"He telleth the number of the stars; He calleth them all by their names."
-- Ps.147:4
