Twinkle Twinkle Little Stars...

What a night... it was so beautiful. I was at HQ yesterday, trying to fix Jan's laptop, when Jan asked me, "Do you want to go star-gazing?"

"Huh? With who? Where?"

"Jeffrey. I'm meeting him at the field near SoC."

So we went, together with Kim Chun.

When we reached there, we saw quite a crowd of students milling around, peering through some telescopes. We bumped into Ziwei there, who introduced us to one of the helpers - a 12-years old guy from NUS High School. It was really a very sweet time, getting to know this guy. Even though he's young, he really knows quite a lot of stuff - I guess more than we did at his age. :)

And the stars! I didn't expect much... and I saw much more than I expected. We got to see Jupiter, in all her magnified glory, with her 4 moons... and the 2 fine bands... I never knew that Jupiter really was so big, and so bright. And something that awed me was how fast the planet moved. But one of the helpers corrected me. "It's not the planet moving - it's the Earth's rotation."

Ah, the classic mistake of the earthbound human... the planets don't revolve around the Earth - they all revolve around the Sun. :)

But I think the most amazing thing was when I peered through another telescope was seeing, in that tiny viewfinder, a whole sprinkling of stars! They almost reminded me of tiny twinkling Christmas lights, arranged in a fractal-like pattern... fairy dust, even... salt from God's shaker... :)

I quickly took a look up, wondering what was in the sky that had such a beautiful star! I looked, and looked, but all my naked eyes could see was the black sky. So I asked the helper, "The stars I'm seeing in the telescope, is it a constellation?"
Using his green laser, he swept the beam around a blank-looking area of the sky and said, "That's not a constellation... that's a cluster of stars."

"But I can't see them with my eyes!"

"Eh... that's why we use a telescope. Haha!"

"Orh... *sheepish grin*"

Wow... it was such a wonder! What looked like a blank blackness was actually teeming with stars upon shining stars that the naked eye couldn't see.

Again, I'm reminded of God's promise to Abraham - "...as numerous as the stars in the sky..."

Wow... such wonder...

Thank God for that experience - it was a wonderful object lesson for me. Sometimes, in life, when we are feeling alone, and we look up at the sky, the sky may seem lonely, with nary a star in sight. But choose to see, beyond the visible, through the eyes of faith as a telescope, the massively numerous stars of God, and remember that "those who are with us are more than those who are with them."

And it really awed me too! We are SOOOO small... so tiny... to stare into the sky, world upon world... worlds of wonder beyond our imagination and ken... I wonder what life is there beyond our tiny playpen? Maybe races that God made, races that never knew a Fall... and we are the only foolish race in the whole universe... foolish, but not forsaken... we could be the lost sheep out of a fold of 100 sheep... and maybe God came looking to save what was lost... who knows??? Cosmic powers beyond our sight, divine interventions on a grand scale... all beyond our sight.

In just one tiny drop of this universe, is simply teeming with stars too many to count... I felt like a small bacteria in a drop of pond water in the huge waters of the earth...

But something that touches my heart a lot is that we may be small... but we are not insignificant! I think it really is a love beyond reason... we are so so so small... so so so tiny... and yet God thinks the universe of us... it's utterly humbling, utterly wonderful... think the only right response is to fall down and worship Him who created the heavens and the earth in all their vast array...

"God of wonders, beyond our galaxy...
You are holy... holy...
The Universe declares Your majesty...
You are holy... holy...
Lord of heaven and earth..."