One night, I stood in the dark and saw the light.

It was a crisp, clear evening, and I had been outside finishing some chores while the sunset smudged itself out on the western horizon. By the time I had completed my tasks, the night was fully present, drawing its curtain across the world. I’m not sure what made me look up, but something did. I tipped my head back and gazed into the dome of dark—and there were the stars. They swam in the depths of the puddle of night, springing to life against the darkness as if flung by the fistful from a divine hand. 

The insistent porch lights on my house grated against the sanctity of the moment, so I ran down the hillside, away from the safety and into the shadows, into the thickness of the trees that blotted out the blaring light from my house and allowed the stars to spark their brightest. And then I stood, gazing into the kaleidoscope of the heavens, into the unknown realm where other worlds swing in their seasonal dance, with the weight of awe draped over my shoulders. 

I’ve always had a fascination with the stars, you see. Maybe it’s the brush with the infinite, the dizzying dance of the planets above my head. Maybe it’s the scientific sense, the knowledge that each of those bright sparks is a fire-forged world of power, a lighthouse in the depths of the heavens. Or maybe it’s simply the beauty, the way the night dims the distractions and narrows to the holy hush of the singing stars. 

Whatever the reason, I’m not alone in my fascination. Every culture has shared my love of the night sky. In the ancient world—the world where signs were searched for and where life paced more slowly—the night sky was a blank canvas ready-made for the imagination of storytellers. Across the vault of the heavens, therefore, marched an impressive parade of mythology—from the hunted bear of the Native peoples to the pantheon of Greek gods and even the prancing tiger of Chinese folklore. 

And I wonder, perhaps, if we look to the skies often enough anymore. With our days clogged with distractions and our gaze sucked into our screens, we don’t have time for the wonder of the night sky. No more must we spin stories from the stars; mass media will tell tales for us. And with artificial light saturating our world as soon as the sun goes down, we’ve bypassed the need to encounter the night altogether. There’s no reason to look to the heavens and make peace with the unknown—not when we can summon our own imitation of light at the flick of a switch. 

But as mystical as it may sound or as pointless as it may seem, I still believe that the stars hold lessons for us. I still believe that if we’re willing, as I was, to walk away from the artificial—to pass beyond the stale confines of safety and take the beckoning hand of the night—then we will learn not just about the stars, but about the Artist Who created them. 

The first and most obvious lesson from the stars is that of the panorama. Considering the vastness of the star-swept heavens overwhelms me—yet the slice of sky I can see from my backyard is the barest sliver of the expanding universe. My earth-bound mind is fenced within the finite, unable to see the stars from the viewpoint of eternity. But God does. 

It’s what I always forget—that the picture is bigger than what I can see. So often, I zoom in on only the barest sliver—the tiny piece of the puzzle I hold—and with my gaze so narrowed, my soul squeezes too. Minor inconveniences inflate themselves to dramatic catastrophes. My needs and desires engulf my time and resources. And the shadows in the story—the questions that linger without answers, the pains that tug at my soul, the secret scars and strivings—loom larger than all the grace. 

But then I look to the stars, and I see those springing lights, and I know that behind each tiny pinprick lie tens of billions of galaxies. The scroll of the heavens unrolls farther than I can see and vaster than my feeble intellect can imagine. And so does the panorama of the work of God. “Now I see in part,” Paul reminded his readers, explaining that not until Heaven would he fully comprehend the magnitude of God’s work: “Then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known” (1 Corinthians 13:12 ESV). And so the stars give me permission to make myself small–to lay aside the topheavy role I so often play and gratefully shrink into my proper human proportions. 

But paradoxically, remembering the vast panorama of God’s work frees me to also recognize His particularity. You see, the God Who weaves a story on epic scales is the same God Who pays attention to every detail. “He determines the number of the stars,” the Psalmist reminds us; “he gives to all of them their names” (Psalm 147:4 ESV). Just consider that—every star, in every galaxy, in the farthest corners of the heavens, is known by name to God. Not a single speck in the entire universe escapes His intimate care. 

And we are no different. Friend, your struggle is not lost in the shuffle. Your prayer does not go unheard. Your tears are not drowned in a crowd. The God Who names each star is the God Who keeps an unwavering gaze on your life, your story. “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?” asks the Psalmist (8:3-4 ESV). But his answer holds the confident ring of God’s blessing: “Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor” (v. 5). God is the God of the infinite, yes—but He is also the God of the intimate.

And because of this intimate love, the stars remind me of the pattern as well. Ancient peoples had no trouble seeing the stories in the stars. Dot by dot, the stars connected in orderly sequences, relating myths and magic. Even today, the International Astronomical Union recognizes eighty-eight constellations—individual star groupings that represent a specific person, story, animal, object, or symbol. 

Some of these I can spot, as I gaze into the night, like Orion with his brilliant belt and upraised sword. Or the confident canine, Canis Major, trotting at the Hunter’s heels. Or the Big Bear that prowls in the northern sky, or the trusty Twins, or Draco, the dragon, slithering along the horizon. And I wonder, as I see the stories engraved in the sky—why were ancient people so ready to recognize their gods in the temple of the heavens, yet I so often fail to recognize the One True God in the world and my life?

I don’t readily connect the dots, and I sweep right past the signs. With my earth-bound feet and downcast gaze, it’s frighteningly easy for me to convince myself that there is no story. The stars scramble in chaos, and so do the events of my life. Disappointments, disasters, dashed dreams, or deepest fears conspire to convince me of a bleak deception: There is no story. There is no pattern. God is not writing your life; He’s leaving you to wander. And aimlessness breeds hopelessness. 

But then I look upward again, and I see them—the spinning stars, the swinging stories, the constellations drawing the lines and connecting the dots for me. Look here! Don’t you see it? Or here—can you not notice? The stars are not jumbled in the sky—they’re purposefully placed. And the same is true for us. No event is a coincidence. No detour is a dead end. In the most mysterious of ways, the High King of the heavens is weaving our stories, around and underneath and among each other, braiding us all into the epic tale of His faithfulness. 

And with the knowledge of the pattern comes the last, the most important, truth: the promise. What is the promise? It’s stunningly simple, the words of Jesus: I am with you. 

His final words, weren’t they? “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20 ESV). And before His crucifixion, when He knew the disciples were headed for a sinking and starless night: “I will not leave you comfortless. I will come to you.”

I will come to you.

Even here?

Yes.

Even now?

Yes.

Even if—

Yes. In all times, at all places, I will come to you. 

I look to the stars, and I remember what I have heard: the light I am seeing from the stars does not arrive at Earth instantly, not with such great gaps of time and space to span. Instead, it began its journey to me many years ago. The light from the closest star to Earth, Proxima Centauri, takes four years to reach our planet. The light from Betelgeuse, a bright star in the constellation Orion, travels almost twice that long. And the light we see from the Orion Nebula first began its journey toward our vision fifteen hundred years ago, when King Arthur was battling Saxons in Briton and the Holy Roman Empire was solidifying across Europe. 

And this is what gives me hope. Because I see in this more than just an interesting fact about the age of the starlight. I see in it the rock-sure promise: that the Light of the World will come to me no matter the distance. 

Two thousand years ago, He came. He left the highest heavens and dived through the blankness of our disregard, the bleakness of our despair. He made the quantum leap from His divinity to our humanity. He walked our dust and ate our bread and dazzled our darkness. He did not leave us stranded on our shadowed planet—He came to us, across every void.

And still, today, He comes. Still, His light speeds through space and invades our shadows. Still, His love catches us in the remotest corners of our longest night. Still, His hope refuses to let the darkness dig into our souls. And still, His voice whispers the promise: I am with you. I will not leave you. I will come to you—no matter the cost. 

“When my faith falters, when I feel God’s absence, when I am moving through the night of the soul,” said writer Madeleine L’Engle, “if I can see a sky full of stars, my heart always lifts.” And so I turn my gaze to the heavens, and I see it all. The infinite glory of God’s unfolding plan. The intimate love of His attention to our lives. The pattern behind each of our stories. And then I look away from the stars and instead focus on His scars—the wounds He bore for me to ensure that I would never dwindle in darkness again. 

Photo credit: Caleb Wood on Unsplash