I was baking cookies for my neighbors when my mother-in-law texted me. “Don’t forget to look at the star tonight!” she wrote. Elbow-deep in cookie dough for peanut butter blossoms and linzer cookies with strawberry jam, I watched the clock and the sunset and waited for the right time. When the last lights of the day were fading, I hung up my apron and headed outside. Our neighborhood was lit with Christmas lights and streetlamps—I couldn’t make out very many stars. The moon shone brightly, but I couldn’t decide if I was seeing the star or not. I went inside, grabbed my purse and keys, and asked my family, “Who wants to go see the star?” My husband and oldest son were engrossed in a basketball game, but my five-year-old ran to put on his shoes. “I’ll go, Mom!”
We drove to our church which sits on the edge of town and is flanked by bare cotton fields. I pulled my van through the yard to the back of the church where it’s darker than dark this time of year. My son ran through the yard, enjoying the freedom of a wide, dark space. We turned in circles trying to see what I wasn’t sure we were looking for. “There it is,” I pointed to him. Just over the roofline of the sanctuary—the conjunction of two slow-moving planets was now impossible to miss. I couldn’t see my son pointing or walking next to me, but his voice was close. “Those other stars look like a spoon! How does it do that?”
“Well, God made it that way. There are so many stars we can’t even count them, but He gave them all names. He knows them all because they belong to Him.” We circled the dark acreage behind the church, skirting the edge of the cotton field. I tried to point out some constellations, but the sky was just so big and the land so flat and wide. Everything felt close.
When I was fourteen, I got into the habit of lying on my back in the backyard and watching the stars at night. My family home was out in the country, way outside the city limits in a rural part of West Tennessee. Behind our two-acre backyard crept an old country road seldom bothered by vehicles. It was always quiet and dark out there. This was before things like smart phones or tablets. We had exactly one family computer with dial-up internet and you used it with purpose, not mindlessness. My companions were books, mostly. Boredom was an expected part of life, not a problem to be medicated with entertainment. So at night in the summers, when I was tired of re-reading the books from my small bookshelf, I would wander outside, lie down on my back and watch the still night sky. I liked to feel small on those nights. To think that God had put each glint of light in its place and given it a name. I wasn’t interested in science, so I didn’t dwell much on rotations and revolutions, yet—the stillness of a dark sky always pressed in close. Sometimes I used to see the stars to feel small when my soul was too big and proud.
Once, a man tried to count the stars. Promises, they were. Each star a son from a man with no son. At fourteen, I’d read about the man plenty of times, had heard him taught in Sunday school often enough for the story to feel a little faded at the edges. I never knew, though, that of all the stars he couldn’t count, one of them was me. I was an adult before some pastor or teacher traced the constellation between God’s promises to Abraham and my position in God’s family. When God told Abraham to count the stars, He told him that his children would outnumber the glints of light filling up the night sky. An old man with no progeny, Abraham’s only star came twenty-five years later. Down through the family line of that one son came the Savior, the blessing of the whole world. But there’s more to God’s promise to an infertile old man under a big night sky. Jesus is the fulfillment and recipient of all the promises of God to Abraham (Galatians 3:16). And, Paul teaches us, that if we belong to Christ, then we belong to Abraham and are heirs according to the promise (see Galatians 3:29). The blessings are ours, too. What the night sky should teach us is that when Abraham counted the stars, he was counting everyone who belongs to Christ.
Sometimes, I see the stars because I need to feel small. But sometimes I see the stars to know that I am included. Sometimes, I see the stars and remember that God’s promises aren’t only for the heroes of the faith or the ones with long-lasting legacies. God’s promises of salvation through faith in Christ are for fourteen-year-old girls lying on their backs trying to make sense of life and faith and the bigness of a God who made everything. His promises are for thirty-nine-year-old moms running in circles in the dark with their kids, trying to distill the great and precious promises of God into one night sky. His promises hold up for thousands of years, bearing up every old man and young woman who come to salvation by faith in Jesus.
It’s all there, written on thin pages from Genesis to Revelation. It’s all there, patterned in constellations and galaxies we can’t detect. Sometimes, I see the stars. And I know that God always keeps His promises.
What the night sky should teach us is that when Abraham counted the stars, he was counting everyone who belongs to Christ. Share on X
Photo by Haiming Xiao on Unsplash
Glenna Marshall is married to her pastor, William, and lives in rural Southeast Missouri where she tries and fails to keep up with her two energetic sons. She is the author of The Promise is His Presence (P&R) and Everyday Faithfulness (Crossway), and Memorizing Scripture (Moody). Connect with her on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.