Blue Sky Thinking

I've just been sitting outside on the wall with a cup of tea, a piece of cake, and an amazing sky. I laid back on the cold concrete to watch the clouds shifting across the blue expanse. Sunlight was bursting through, making the low fluffy cumulus look like gilded angels wings, while cirrus clouds flew ethereally above like wispy lace. I love watching the sky move. Last week at Monkton Combe, I lay on Emmie's blanket outside her teepee and watched the clouds whip across the view. It made it look like the tent was moving, and if I half-squinted I could pretend I was onboard the deck of a fine ship, with a billowing canvas and a thin gold mast.

The sky is huge. Some time soon the sun will sink below the horizon and the stars will pop out like pinholes in a velvet sheet. God has been speaking to me a lot about the stars recently. Here is a little bit of Psalm 8 to set the mood.

O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory
above the heavens.

From the lips of children and infants
you have ordained praise
because of your enemies,
to silence the foe and the avenger.

When I consider 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,
the son of man that you care for him?

You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.

It amazes me too, to think that God knows my name. I mean the Psalmist wrote the Psalms, surely God knows his name... but Matt Stubbs (32), failing piano teacher and worship leader, of Reading, Berkshire?

Then, as Cassiopeia and Orion, the Great Bear and the Pleiades emerge from the sunset, thousands of light years away (and long ago), and the moon beams brightly through the silvery sky, I can't help thinking just how small I am. One of six billion names, lost in the ocean of humanity on a tiny, insignificant planet. There are 9 billion other stars in our galaxy, and countless galaxies spinning and filling the Universe, and here I am looking up at a little patch of night on a cold stone wall. And yet, he is mindful of me. He cares for me, and crowns me with glory and honour. That deserves a wow. He doesn't just know of me, he cares for me! Wow, wow, wow. He crowns me! He what? He gives me a crown?? I mean, seriously? of what? of glory and of honour. God Almighty, creator of the proton, the whirlpool galaxy, quantum mechanics and the bumblebee... actually wants me (doubter, sinner, liar, cheat, foolish, emotionally unstable Matt Stubbs (32) of Reading, Berkshire) to reflect some of his glory? It is frankly preposterous. :)

Rich Mullins once wrote a song with the line: "Sometimes I think of Abraham, how one star he saw was lit for me." I like that. It reminds me that the little portion of his glory God set aside for me and designed for me to reflect, is just the same down here on this cold stone wall. A little pinhole of light in a velvet canvas.

I wonder how well I'm shining. I wonder what he sees.