I can remember watching this particular meteor shower several times over the years. It happens every year, just about this time. My first memory is from a trip we took when I was just a kid. We were driving north – I don’t remember all of the details, but it seems to me we were outside of Cheyenne, Wyoming. We stopped at a rest area to sleep for a few hours. Dad got out some sleeping bags and he and some of us kids threw them out on the grass, in the open, and crawled in to sleep awhile. I remember laying there, listening to the big trucks out on the interstate, the crickets and other night insects chirping and whirring, the light breeze blowing through a couple of nearby trees, the smell of the grass, crushed beneath our bags. And I especially remember looking up into the night sky. There were lights from the rest stop, but we were far away at one end. The deep, midnight blue sky stretched as far as I could see, studded with twinkling pricks of starlight. Suddenly, a streak of pale blue raced across the stars. Several more followed over the course of the next few minutes, many just tiny blips of light, others brilliant in their brief appearance. A few stretched for miles across the sky, thin slashes of light, there for a brief second in time, and then gone forever. It was a long time before I finally took off my glasses, closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep.
Many years later we were living out at Peyton, Colorado. I worked a full-time job in Colorado Springs and commuted 30 miles each way every day. In the summers I would often wash the laundry late in the evenings and hang it out to dry overnight. One night I took a basket of wet clothing out into the back yard, set in on the ground, and then stood up with an article of clothing to hang on the wire above my head. Immediately, as I reached up, my eyes caught site of a flash of pale blue light in the sky. I stopped and just stood there, one hand on the wire, the other holding the clothing and a clothespin, staring up into the night sky. As I stood there, several more ‘falling stars’ raced by overhead. Eventually I finished hanging up the whole basket of clothes, watching the sky and counting the meteors as they fell to earth. I remember reporting the number to Mel when I went inside, but I don’t remember now what it was. More than a few – many. Many falling stars flashing across the night sky. The Persieds Meteor Shower.
How I miss the night sky! There is something about looking up into the vastness of the universe that fills me with a sense of warmth and security. What is out there? I enjoy looking at photos from the Hubble Space Telescope and dreaming of what it would be like to journey among the stars. I often wonder, what do the stars, the planets, space – what does it look like to God? He can see it in the fullness of it’s being – the whole spectrum of light – sunlight, ultraviolet, all forms of light and dark. He made the stars. He brought them into being with just a word. He brings them out each night, He calls them each by name.
There was a time when I thought maybe I cared too much about the natural world, that maybe I was placing it ahead of my love for God. I wondered if maybe it was wrong to care so much about it – did God care about it, or was He only concerned with man, heaven, angels, sin, etc.? One day as I was reading through the Old Testament minor prophets I came across these verses:
He who forms the mountains,
Creates the wind,
And reveals his thoughts to man,
He who turns dawn to darkness,
And treads the high places of the earth –
The Lord God Almighty is his name, Amos 4:13
”…he who made the Pleiades and Orion –
Who turns blackness into dawn
And darkens day into night,
Who calls for the waters of the sea
And pours them out over the face of the land –
The Lord is his name. Amos 5:8
I was reminded of the verse in the Psalm:
He determines the number of the stars
And calls them each by name. Psalm 147:4
Yes, because I enjoy looking at and thinking about His creation so very much I could easily let it become an idol in my life. Yet … I know God created the heavens, the stars and planets, space and earth – everything in creation was created to bring Him glory. He cares for His creation – He calls each star by name! When I, His child, enjoy His creation, rejoice in it and give Him praise and glory for it – it is pleasing to Him.
Thank you Father for creating the stars, for creating space. Thank you for the meteor showers you bring the earth through each year. Thank you Father, that even though I cannot see them at this time, I know that they are there, that as one season follows another, You have brought them back again. Father, I know you call each star by name, and yet it is just an inanimate thing. How much more You care for Your children! All glory, praise and honor be unto You! Amen…amen!
For more information about the Persied Meteor Shower:
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