Several weeks ago, we passed the peak of the Perseid meteor shower for this year. Perseus is a constellation in the north sky. The star shower reached its peak on August 12-13, but you can see the lovely display of shooting stars until September 1. The best time to see it is between midnight and pre-dawn, although you can see them from about 10 pm on. I woke up at 4 am the day of its peak and wandered out into my garden to watch. It helps to have a place where there is not a lot of ambient light. That morning, I saw a shooting star about every 5 minutes. I’m sure if there had been less ambient light, I would have seen more. In Nantucket, we would stretch out on our lounge chairs and watch the display with the Milky Way in the background.
The shooting stars you see are pieces of the Perseid comet passing by the earth. We see them as they enter the atmosphere and burn up. The Perseus constellation is not the easiest to find, but you can find where the Cassiopeia constellation sits in the sky. It looks like a giant W in the north sky and is much brighter than Perseus. If you look at the W, you will see the shooting stars.
As I was enjoying the meteor shower, I thought about the stars themselves and what the Bible says about their creation. We first hear of them in Genesis when the Lord placed them in the sky.
“And God made the two great lights – the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night – and the stars. And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, to govern the day and night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good.” (1)
When I was a child, my dad would go outside with me at night so I could learn the constellations. First the north star, and then the big and small dipper, Orion, Cassiopeia and others. I took a class at UNC where they showed us how they trained our astronauts to identify where they were just by viewing the sky through their tiny windows. The planetarium shrunk our view of the sky to match the astronauts. I’ve never forgotten it.
Job talks about the constellations.
“Can you bring forth the constellations in their season or lead out the Bear with its cubs?” (2)
This week a swallowtail butterfly was feasting on the butterfly bush in my garden. One reason I love these creatures is the patterning on their wings reminds me of the stars. See if you don’t agree.
Finally, I am most blessed by this. Our Lord knows the stars by name.
“He determines the number of the stars; he gives to all of them their names.” (3)
In a world where people are always trying to prove the big bang theory, we have a God who placed the stars in the sky, named them and tells us about them in the Word. What a great, generous, awesome God we serve!
- Genesis 1:16-19 ESV
- Job 38:32 NIV
- Psalm 147:4 ESV
