God Created the Stars

Posted on by Astrid

Yesterday, I started for maybe the fifth or so time in a Bible-in-a-year plan. However, this time, unlike any of the other times, I didn’t just try to read the Bible cover to cover. In fact, I’m not reading it cover to cover at all. Yesterday’s assigned chapters included Psalm 1, Matthew 1 and of course Genesis 1. The plan also included commentary in the form of a devotional. The verse I want to talk about now is in Genesis 1.

“God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars.” (Genesis 1:16 NIV)

The part the plan writer highlighted, was the last bit about the stars. He commented that there are literally billions of stars in our galaxy alone. I had no idea! However, isn’t this fascinating?

Whether the Biblical account of creation is literally correct, is beside the point. It isn’t about when or how. It is about who and why. And the “who” in the Bible is God.

I think it’s quite amazing that God created an entire universe, complete with constellations and constellations of stars, and put humanity at the center of it. He could just as easily have chosen anything else. Maybe if He’d chosen another living creature, it wouldn’t have ruined the planet and beyond as much as we do.

But God has His reasons for having chosen us. And having allowed us to mess up. I’m not yet sure what they are. Maybe I’ll never find out. It’s a fact of life though that we – all of us – mess up. That’s why we need Jesus.

And maybe God’s reason for having put us at the center of the universe and yet having allowed us to mess up massively, isn’t about us at all. We tend to make everything about us, after all, both individually and as a species.

Maybe by Godly standards, we aren’t as important as we think. In fact, I’m pretty sure that most of us overestimate our importance and underestimate our shortcomings precisely because we measure ourselves by human standards. At least I do. And yet by Godly standards, only one human (Jesus) met the bar. My defiant side says this isn’t fair. Yet it only isn’t fair if we put ourselves at the center of the universe. If we put Jesus at the center, it is most definitely fair.

I am joining in with #JusJoJan, for which the prompt today is “constellation”.

I’m also linking up with Inspire Me Monday.

Knowing God When I’m at a Fork in the Road

Posted on by Astrid

Yesterday, I finished the First steps with Jesus Bible plan on YouVersion and I immediately wanted to start a new Bible reading plan. I looked through the most recently added plans and found one called: Hey God, Can We Talk? I’m at a Fork in the Road. I clicked on it and apparently loved its description, although I can’t remember it right now. So I decided to start the plan.

The plan walks us through Jacob’s story. For the first day, we were asked to read the verses in Genesis 28 where Jacob leaves for Bethel after Esau plans to kill him. I had no idea about this. I mean, I thought the idea that Jacob would receive Isaac’s blessing rather than Esau had been mutually agreed upon. That’s how my father explained it once when we ate lentils for dinner: that Esau voluntarily swapped his firstborn’s right for a bowl of lentils. He then personalized the story to my younger sister and me. I probably thought to myself that my sister could keep her yucky lentils and eat mine as well.

Anyway, apparently not. Rebekah had urged Jacob to escape the family home and go to her brother. This, the plan author compares to us leaving home to go off to college. Except, she says, Jacob didn’t have his family to support him should catastrophe strike. This hit home to me.

When I lived independently in Nijmegen in 2007, I didn’t have my parents’ support either. That is, when I wasn’t coping, they made it very clear that I wasn’t to rely on them. I had my community support staff, of course, but they too had their conditions for supporting me.

At one point while resting in Bethel, Jacob has a very important dream. In it, the Lord speaks to him and promises him the land on which he lay. Okay, fine by me. I don’t need land. but I do need comfort.

The plan then goes on to highlight verse 16: “When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, ‘Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it.'” (Genesis 28:16 NIV)

This, then, was comforting but also slightly scary to Jacob. This is so relatable! In 2007, I had no idea there was even a God, let alone that He cares about my life. Now I do know, but it’s sometimes scary too. Maybe because I am not used, with the exception of my husband (and I doubt that all the time), to being loved unconditionally.

Of course, Jacob’s story takes place long before Christ. However, the God of the Old Testament, unlike what some atheists told me when I first learned about religion, isn’t a horrible dictator. He is still the same and He was with Jacob. I love this. Do you, too?

Linking up with Grace and Truth.

Waiting for Sunrise #Write28Days

Posted on by Astrid

Welcome to day five in #Write28Days. Today’s prompt is “Sunrise”. It is also this week’s prompt for Five Minute Friday. I’ll try to freewrite for this post, although I won’t set a timer.

At first, the prompt didn’t speak to me. I have rarely in my life ever seen the sunrise, as I don’t usually get up before dawn. Besides, I am almost completely blind, so I am not able to appreciate its visual effects as much as others. To me, sunrise looks pretty much exactly like sunset. I know there’s a difference, but I can’t see it.

Then I saw that some fellow Five Minute Friday writers have used the sunrise prompt as a way to symbolize the coming of something good. According to Genesis, God created the sun to mark the day and the moon to mark the night. Indeed, a new morning is often appreciated as something positive. It symbolizes a new chance to make positive changes to our life or world.

Why, though, should we wait for that new dawn? We shouldn’t wait for Jesus to come back to make everything right. With God’s help, we can make positive changes to our life and world right now, even though it’s 8:30PM on a Friday in February and the sun has long set.

There are so many things I want to change about my life and world. Personally, I want to develop my distress tolerance. I want to lose weight. I want to deepen my faith. Politically, I want to educate myself on areas in which I experience privilege, such as race.

I don’t need to and shouldn’t be procrastinating on these things. I may not be able to accomplish them all at once. However, with God’s help, each and every second of every single day, I get to make a choice between love and judgment, ignorance and education, health and sickness, faith and despair. Right now, I am making a choice to trust God. Thanks to His grace, I trust I can make these other positive choices.