Connecting Dots

Ursa Major

Asterism.

The Big Dipper is probably the most recognizable chunk of the night sky. Discounting the moon, of course. The moon is neat, but a stargazer does not always appreciate the light our planet's natural satellite reflects.

Interestingly, the famous array of stars known as The Big Dipper is not a constellation. It is an asterism, which means that it is a part of a constellation. Specifically, it is a part of the Ursa Major constellation. The Great Bear. Personally, I think they should have named this constellation after an animal with a longer tail.

Bigness.

Looking at the stars is something I have found joy in for many years. It is an incomparable way of experiencing God's bigness. It is approximated that over 2,000 stars are visible to the naked eye in good conditions. There are hundreds of billions of stars we cannot see. That is big.

Over the past few months, I have let stargazing become something of a hobby (not that I needed anymore of those...). Instead of looking up at night and saying, "Ooh, pretty," I have adopted a more educational habit of glancing up and down between the sky and my book about stars.

The more I look at the night sky, the more I recognize it. And whenever I see a constellation that I recognize or remember the name of a specific star, I feel closer to the Creator God who put them there. I would love to sit and listen to God tell the story of how He placed the stars in the sky. I wonder if He has a constellation out there that looks more like a bear than Ursa Major. I wonder if He refers to Ursa Major as something more reasonable, like the Great Hyena.

Cue metaphor.

Whenever I start to learn something new, especially within a broad field like astronomy, I am reminded of how little I actually know, of how much there is to learn and, all the while, of the reality that I will in my lifetime barely scratch the surface of all there is to know. 

I have been actively getting to know God for over a decade now, yet my relationship with Him is a mere asterism in a constellation that is planted in a massive sky of stars. But, in getting to know Him, I start to recognize Him more and more in the details that make up life and also in the broader story I find myself in. I am slowly connecting dots and forming constellations out of the infinite abundance of good things that God is.

Vincent van Gogh's Starry Night Over the Rhone