The Stars

The next full-length post will be coming soon, but until then, here's another excerpt from my travel diary. This was the first thing I wrote after a couple weeks of being in Levin and too preoccupied to journal:

I don't know what day it is (I think it may be the twelfth) and I know I haven't written at all about Carolyn's place, but I just have to say something.

I wish for everything that I could capture an image of the stars here for you. On the clearest of nights, they are a sweeping arch that begins at the treeline on one side of the barn, stretching overhead and becoming more expansive as it goes, to then sprinkle down to the tops of the mountains across the fields. At the highest point, they are so numerous that they seem to blur together into a magnificent cloud of stars, and then become less frequent but brighter as they descend to the peaks.

The only thing I can compare it to is when I was a young child and my family spent a couple weeks in the village of Nueva Vida, Bolivia, on a missions trip. Every single night, due to the lack of electricity, the Milky Way filled the night sky as we walked across the field to our temporary home.

Yet somehow, the New Zealand sky looks even wider, even more, so that I cannot help but gaze up at it in open-mouthed wonder when I tend to the horses after dark. All I could think as I walked back in tonight was that I must live in a place where I can see these stars. Where they are not crowded by trees or dimmed by city lights. Where they can be mine to look at whenever I wish, and I will never again forget their glorious majesty.

To quote Anne Shirley: "The world looks like something God just imagined for His own pleasure."

I'm wonder-struck and grateful to know that He chose to share His imaginings with us.