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Starlight
/ Godplans
by
roald maravillas
"For
I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD,
"plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to
give you hope and a future. " -- Jer. 29:11
When
we look upon a starry night sky, the starlight that
reaches our eyes actually shows the stars as they
"were" hundreds of years ago. We see them not as
they really are, but as they "were" when the
starlight began its journey a long time ago. The farther
out in space we look, the farther back in time we see.
It
means that at the very exact moment of gazing at a
constellation, some of these stars may have already
drifted to different locations, some of them may have
exploded and are gone, and some new stars could be
sprouting - all these could be simultaneously happening
billions of miles away as we gaze at the "echo"
of how they were thousands of years ago. We probably wont
live that long to "see" most of these changes
because our informant - the light - that has just emanated
from that star has only begun to travel from millions of
miles away to bring us information, and will probably take
years to reach earth. The speed of light is 186,000 miles
per second - this is the fastest feedback that we can get
when observing our physical world. The light from the sun
- our very own star - takes around eight minutes to reach
us. We actually don't perceive anything in
"real-time" because we are constrained by the
time lag it takes for light as well as other signals to
reach our senses and ultimately our perceptions.
Such
phenomenon is a good analogy to show how we sense God's
work in our life : it takes some time for us to see His
grand master plan unfold. Often we don't really understand
why things are happening in our life, and we only see our
own "now" and "here" slice of our
world, only seeing things as they appear to be, and
oblivious to the fact that God has done - and is
continually doing - something great in advance.
Bad
times seems to make no sense, only because we have to
patiently wait awhile till we see what God intended for us
after all, and then we are shaken back to our senses as
His plan finally unfolds right before our very eyes.
Sometimes it takes huge time frames - such as a whole
lifetime, and large distances, for us to eventually
realize and fathom His plans. The good times that happen
to our lives often passes by un-thanked for and is quickly
forgotten, but the worst incidents or accidents in our
lives, no matter how hard we ask for the reasons why, we
may never really understand at all why they ever happened.
Its of the secret things.
"I
don't know where the sunbeams end and the starlight
begins. Its all a mystery." - The Flaming Lips
God
always moves ahead of us...He is always
"previous", He has a wonderful plan for our
life, and He is constantly at work on it. He shines us
blessings even before we know it, or not know it.
Stargazers often travel to a quiet place far away from the
busy city, where there are no city lights to obscure
oncoming starlight from the heavens. It is where the
beauty of the stars can clearly be seen and beheld.
We
actually have that place somewhere in our hearts that is
free from distractions where we too can gaze at all the
starlight blessings that has shone throughout the years of
our life, and see those that are pouring right before our
very eyes, and anticipate those that are still on their
way- the Godplans. Just like a stargazer, we can visit
that place in our heart where we can see how wonderful
life really is, for it is a place where we can behold how
magnificent God really is.
"He
telleth the number of the stars; He calleth them all by
their names." -- Ps. 147:4
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