lots of star thoughts

O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder

Consider all the things Thy hands hath made

I see the stars, I hear the mighty thunder

Thy power throughout the universe displayed

Then sings my soul, my Saviour God, to Thee

How great Thou art

How great Thou art

Then sings my soul, my Saviour God to Thee

How great Thou art, How great Thou art

it is so deliciously dark tonight
I had to just stop and stare up, up, at the sky and the tiny pinpricks of glowing that are cold suns, white-gold stars 

I've found I've been doing this a lot lately     staring at the sky

but I can't help it.

You cannot be under a canopy like that without stopping, at least for a second, and soaking, breathing it in.

And when you're standing there, the crispness of the air just spilling into your lungs, the whole of the periphery of your vision 
filled with a studded expanse of velvet black deep     there's somehow this
overwhelming sense of safeness 
of being held
encompassed
kept.

Creator God reminding you that you are His, 

you're in His care, under His eyes, surrounded by His love.

I'm over-awed by the beauty He's crafted, the way He's scattered those stars. They twinkle     and yet if you hold your breath, they are utterly still.

thought-words ripple out of me: Be still, my soul. That still, small voice. The power, the might of God. His silent long-suffering and patience to this darkened world. His inexpressible Love.

I feel what a speck I am, how unworthy, how irrefutably undeserving. But the One who swathed that sky in powdered light has placed His love on me... so much so that He was willing to walk the claying earth His own hands created for my sake.

 And when I think of God, His Son not sparing

Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in

That on the cross, my burden gladly bearing

He bled and died, to take away my sin

No sacrifice I could ever make should be too great for my matchless Saviour!
Lord, help me count it nothing to give up everything for You.

looking up, I always like to imagine     utterly fancifully     that it's almost as if the sky was a draped black cloth and the stars were little holes that Heaven was shining through... which is silly but my heart always leaps a little and I'm glad Dad made me memorize 1 Corinthians 13 so I can whisper: 'now I see through a glass darkly - but then face to face... now I know in part - but then shall I know, even as also I am known'.

may your Sunday night be just as Star-struck as mine has been.

the empty house

on my way to the train station every morning, I pass the triangle slice of ground where the porter's cottage used to stand. I remember, peering through the chicken wire fence, when the builders first swarmed all over the cottage roof     and how I looked, and saw through the hollowed window frame, a photo still hanging on the wall-papered wall: a photo that held memories and comfort and being, that eyes had brushed over every night before going to bed, and hands had pinned carefully up... and it kind of made me tear a little, to think those eyes and hands were gone now, and soon     the last remnants of that little home would be too... ...and then the fragments of plaster trickled down, and I had to run for my train.

Tiles splinter onto the grass-spiked ground

A crash that echoes into a puff of swirling dust:

the sound of echoing laughter

smiles that were

And now, no longer.

You know not what you do

Dust to dust, echo to ground

With callous hands they raze and plunder

Thinking of moving in? they shout

Sometimes I think and pause to wonder

what Life

is all about.

The Jack-built house stands cold, alone

Forgotten when she passed away

You stand and watch it

Hard eye glazing, purposing the figures

and facts

As if they were

And that was all that mattered.