The night sky causes the Psalmist to become quite contemplative. He waxes poetic about the majesty of the moon and the stars established in their courses. When one looks at the heavens, dark and foreboding, going on and on forever and ever, it is immense, endless, alive with twinkling lights, falling stars, flashing comets.
I have sat in the high dessert, far from any artificial, man made light, watching the crystal sky devoid of any cloud cover, listening to the coyotes, fearing the snakes seeking warmth, feeling lost under the night sky. Feeling completely enveloped in the darkness, stars close enough to touch, it was truly hard to imagine that in the vastness of God's creation, in a place populated by majestic elk, elusive wolves and diamondback rattlers, we humans would actually warrant a nod. What are human beings that God is mindful of us?
The beaches of the Outer Banks are home to hatching sea turtles and thus outside lights in late summer are not permitted. After dark the moon rises and the stars come out in inky darkness occasionally blanketed by billowing clouds, the great ocean heaves its waves and pulls the water back to the deeps. The movement of the water reflects the glow of the night sky and one feels completely cloaked in the greatness of the universe. One is surrounded by small creatures moving under and over the sand and one is eerily aware of the sea creatures unseen beneath the moving waters. What is humanity that God is mindful of us?
In the Canadian Arctic Circle as the winter duskiness of daytime turns to the blackness of night, the Northern lights--greens, yellows and oranges--move across the sky in a dance of light and color choreographed by the creator of all that is. Stars appear miniscule and the moon seems to evaporate as one loses oneself to the cold and the beauty. How is it that when God can make electrical waves move with the grace of a ballerina that God is mindful of the frail human creatures inhabiting this earth?
I do not know the answer to that. But I do know that God is indeed mindful of us. For while God could conduct the orchestral movements of creation, dictating the placement of the planets with a flick of the wrist, raising and lowering the lights to indicate day and night; it is the humans alone for whom God bent to the dust of the earth to place lip upon lip and breathe the breath of life into the new beloved creature. Out of the dark nothingness of the second creation story, humanity was so beloved as to become co-creators with God, naming the creatures, delighting the creator with names and antics, in an intimate relationship of love.
I do not know how it is that God continued to be mindful of God's people even after our disobedience throughout history, after stories of turning from God and hearts that were hard and unyielding. But God's faithfulness was unrelenting until under a night sky, bright with starlight, as a woman panted and her husband kept gentle watch, God entered the world as a human being. As cattle and sheep, spiders and fowl looked on, God so loved humanity as to become one with us. The least of humanity and the highest of the angels congregated together to pay homage to the divine infant who nursed at his mother's mortal breast.
I do not know how is it that God continued to be mindful of God's people as the child became a man and was thrown out of his own hometown. He was challenged and mocked, taunted and discredited. His own beloved followers abandoned, denied and betrayed him as the skeptics sent him to be abused and beaten and condemned to death.
On a hill called Golgotha the afternoon sun was covered and the sky became as black as night. Jesus cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you no longer mindful of me?"
In the darkness of night our fear wrestles with the reality of God's mercy. In the blindness of our being we imagine ourselves inconsequential to the God who formed us. In the unseeing recesses of our imagination we know that God could not possibly tolerate our misbehavior, our sinful natures.
And yet it is into the darkness that God brings light. It is in the brilliance of the morning light, reflecting on the dew of a garden that resurrection life came.
I do not understand how it is that God is mindful of us when we continue to cherish the darkness of sin.
But I do know that it was in the darkness of a prison cell that God's light of salvation came to Paul. It was after 50 nights of reflection and the darkness of wondering if the Spirit would ever come, that the light of tongues of flames appeared to the disciples. It is to be after the dark night of death that the martyrs and saints will gather at the river of life with the lamb as the light at the center.
I do not understand how it is that God is mindful of us. But I do know that the God of creation, the majestic God whose name defies utterance, is our God. Our magnificent, omnipotent, mindful of all things, God. Emmanuel, God with us.
