Silent Music

This morning, when I woke up, I clambered bleary-eyed out of my tent and could see the Southern Cross suspended in the sky, hung just above Mount Kilimanjaro.

Then, as we took an hour to lounge around the resort that we didn’t stay at, I read this:

“…At midnight it feels there is more light in the sky than darkness, as though God took a fistful of stardust and threw it upward where it shimmers at the apex of its ascent, as though what we know as creation exists only for this brief second before it all comes crashing down again.  Brilliant blue clusters spread thick and dense and they sparkle and fade, sparkle and fade.  It is silent music, the night sky.  God does well to live atop them.  And I wonder, as I lie in the meadow with a piece of grass between my teeth, if angels look down upon the sky to which we look up? …I wonder at His beautiful system and how it feels better than anything I could choose or invent for myself.  I wonder as I gaze up at the night sky, this love letter from God to creation, this reminder that somewhere there is peace, somewhere there is order, and I think about how great His kingdom is, and is going to be, and I wonder, in this rare and beautiful moment, how I could ever want to walk away from it all.  There are so many stars I will dream of them.  I open my eyes and see stars, then close them and see stars. 

…God is an artist, I think to myself.  I have known this for a long time, seeing His brushwork in the sunrise and sunset, and His sculpting in the mountains and the rivers.  But the night sky is His greatest work.  And I would have never known it if I had stayed in Houston.  I would have bought a little condo and filled it with Ikea trinkets and dated some girl because she was hot and would have read self-help books, end to end, one after another, trying to fix the gaping hole in the bottom of my soul, the hole that, right now, seems plugged with Orion, allowing my soul to collect that feeling of belonging and love you only get when you stop long enough to engage the obvious.”

(from Through Painted Deserts, by Don Miller. p. 225 – 227. )

Don Miller, you write what my soul would be saying if it had the right words. Thank you.

[image via We Heart It]