11 Mar Monday

I miss the starry skies of night, the silence far from cities, the sweep of the Milky Way, and the aurora borealis. Here so near the light pollution of the city, perhaps on a very dark night the new moon, one might see only a couple hundred stars. God gave us the stars so that we can be filled with awe and wonder, and in seeing them we will know our place.

Tolkien wrote in his essay “On Faerie Tales”, that humans find two things most deeply satisfying: first to survey the cosmos, and second, to experience a sort of oneness with the cosmos.

This is the experience of Abraham and divine guest. God has called him from Ur of the Chaldeans to a new land. Abraham trusts God. Yet, now in the tent on the plains, a question arises, almost a plea and an argument. Abraham has no children, and wonders about his future. God responds by recounting the past. In other words, God is the Lord of history, and really does penetrate our human experiences in some mysterious way.

The question of children leads to questions about possessing the land. Here then we have the traditional biblical blessings from the covenant: children wealth, length of days, peace!