Have you not known?

Do you not know?
   Have you not heard?
Has it not been told you from the beginning?
   Have you not understood since the earth was founded?
He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth,
   and its people are like grasshoppers.
He stretches out the heavens like a canopy,
   and spreads them out like a tent to live in.
He brings princes to naught
   and reduces the rulers of this world to nothing.
No sooner are they planted,
   no sooner are they sown,
   no sooner do they take root in the ground,
than he blows on them and they wither,
   and a whirlwind sweeps them away like chaff.

“To whom will you compare me?
   Or who is my equal?” says the Holy One.
Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens:
   Who created all these?
He who brings out the starry host one by one
   and calls forth each of them by name.
Because of his great power and mighty strength,
   not one of them is missing.
Why do you complain, Jacob?
   Why do you say, Israel,
“My way is hidden from the LORD;
   my cause is disregarded by my God”?
Do you not know?
   Have you not heard? 

The LORD is the everlasting God,
   the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
   and his understanding no one can fathom.
He gives strength to the weary
   and increases the power of the weak.
Even youths grow tired and weary,
   and young men stumble and fall;
but those who hope in the LORD
   will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
   they will run and not grow weary,
   they will walk and not be faint.
--Isaiah 40:21-31



First, this made me think about the claims God makes in the book of Job. I am taking part in Bible 365, a program at church to read the entire Bible in a year. We just finished the Book of Job.

Then I read this lovely sermon by Rosalind Hughes.  It got me thinking about how the stars have been seen as guideposts for so many different people in so many different cultures. This text from Isaiah uses the stars as one of the many wonders pointing to the proof of God's existence.

 We live in a world were the stars are ever more obscured by pollution made by light and pollution in the air itself. A couple of years ago I bought my husband a decent telescope, and it was amazing to see so many more objects, even surrounded by the cast-off light of the suburbs. We still haven't gotten around to taking it out into the countryside to really get away from urban light pollution, due to exhaustion, because, you know, it's LATE at night when you get a chance to do these things, and we are already tired.

But I know that the night sky I can see now seems much dimmer than the one I could see as a child-- even accounting for changes in my vision due to aging. I remember lying in the back of the station wagon (yeah, I know, it's a miracle we survived childhood) during the 250 mile trip back from Grandma's house in western Oklahoma and seeing the Milky Way in all its glory (see the first image on this page). I remember the hundred of shooting stars zip along the highway there on the prairie until it seemed certain that they had landed out there on the plains somewhere and thinking about something from millions and millions of miles away reaching the earth, and that those distances were still nothing compared to the full breadth of space.

And yes, this made me contemplate the miraculous works of God. I was certain I was seeing the handiwork of the Creator. It seemed impossible to me to imagine that all this distance and breadth and wonder had come into being merely based on random chance. These were some of my most memorable encounters with what I would later learn to call "the numinous," and it left me in awe.

Now the stars seem obscured. Is it because of that light pollution, or is it because we rush about and work until late in the night and forget to look up to treat ourselves to some of the most incredible proofs of the existence of the Creator?

But I can't allow myself to forget. "Have I not known? Have I not heard?"

I have heard and I have seen. I just have to not forget, or to close my eyes or my mind to the marvelous presence of God in everyday, yet certainly not humble, things.