A number of years ago I spent a month working for the Indian Health Service in Zuni, New Mexico. It was a formative personal and professional experience, as well as a spiritual one.
One Saturday evening, a hospital colleague drove a group of us out into the desert to look at the stars. I’d always been intrigued by the stars and their constellations (for my sixth grade science project I’d created a constellation box out of a shoe box), but I’d never lived in an area where the stars filled the sky so as they did that night in New Mexico.
As I write this on the Day of Epiphany, I am reminded that from time immemorial, human beings have gazed into the heavens. I suppose as we look, we experience different things, but for me, the stars fill me with wonder and mystery and beauty. To me, those are things of God: wonder, mystery, and beauty.
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars that you have established;
what are human beings that you are mindful of them,
mortals that you care for them?
Psalm 8:3-4
I haven’t ignored the news today. I haven’t avoided the horrific images from the U.S. Capitol building a year ago on the Day of Epiphany.
But it helps to be reminded that in the midst of human brokenness, there is still wonder; there is still mystery; there is still beauty. There is still God.
In Christ,
Pastor Jen