Wednesday, April 7, 2021

Wondrous Heavenly Things

 


[1]

Psalm 119:18 

King James Version (KJV)

18 Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things...

 

Brock Kidd in the July 10, 2020, devotional in Daily Guideposts 2020 pulled an unforgiveable punch with the quote as I wrote it above. Of course, if your mind thinks along similar tracks to mine it automatically fills in “out of Thy law.” Ignoring the inspired ending to the verse, he went on to describe a cabin his grandfather had built where he would retire to meditate. Allow me to prolong Brock’s abuse of scripture.

At four-thirty on the same morning I read Brock’s story, Katie, our beloved mongrel, and I went out to Doty Park near home. There was a promise of seeing Comet Neowise. The park was dark and silent. Across the sky in a magnificent arc of a circle stretched four naked-eye planets. Punctuated on the right (west) shone Jupiter, and on the left Venus outshone even Jupiter. Continuously social distancing herself wider and wider from Jupiter, Saturn followed, looking pale compared to her brilliant sisters. Racing towards Venus almost as fast as Venus was racing toward her was Mars. And in their very midst sat an almost pregnant Moon, brighter than all four sisters combined.

Immediately below Venus hunkered Aldebaran—the bull’s eye. With my binoculars I noticed a cloud of stars, the Pleiades, dancing around Venus. In ancient Greek mythology they were considered a troop of nymphs bringing rain. They would have to prance a whole lot livelier to bring us rain in this middle of the dry season.

We didn’t find the comet. A week or so later it had moved into the evening sky, so Sylvia, Katie, and I drove out into the desert where we had true night. Sure enough, we saw a wondrous, naked eye comet in the north sky under a magnificent Big Dipper. We sat there a while and then walked around in the warm desert evening marveling at God’s handiwork in the heavens.

Help me, Lord, to put similar effort into seeing wondrous things in Thy Law.

 

 



[1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/10/21318478/nasa-f3-comet-neowise-see-watch-astrophotography-space

No comments:

Post a Comment