Shooting Stars

I recently found this on my iPad as I was cleaning off meeting notes that I no longer need.  I originally wrote this on the way to Louisville, KY for my first Company of New Pastors meeting, only a few months into my final year in seminary... It still applies today.  Enjoy....

There is something powerful about shooting stars. I saw my first one in high school- I was at the lake with my friends and we were laying on the back porch looking up a the sky and talking about life (ok... boys lol) and I saw that streak of light go across the sky.  I was so excited and quickly made a wish.

As I write this I am sitting on quite possibly the smallest plane I have ever been on and it is way too early in the morning to really be thinking at all- especially since I only got two hours of sleep last night at best.  It is still early enough that I can look out my window and see the stars- it hurts my neck a bit but it is worth it.  Up here with the stars- I can't help but feel close to God.  The stars make me dream. They make me wonder. Then comes that beautiful shooting star- you know, the one that disappears just as quickly as it shows up but it lights up two more times as it falls. It is almost as if God is telling me that my prayers are being heard and I am not alone.  An then comes another, and yet another.  Three shooting stars in a matter of five minutes- I might have seen that many in my whole life.

No matter what I portray during the day, I am still a little girl at heart.  My teddy bear is tied up somewhere in my sheets back home, I call my parents when I feel like I need a hug, and I make wishes.  I wish when the clock says 11:11 and I wish on shooting stars.  Only now my wishes are more like prayers and the little things like time or stars just remind me to pray.

How often do we forget that? We are quick to pray when things are going wrong or we need help, but how often do we just take 10 seconds to thank God for this life? 

I rarely get to look at the stars now, and never get to look at them this close.  As we fly up here and I look out my window at the stars and then out the window across the aisle and see the sun rising in the distance, I think of the passage in Genesis- God created the stars in the heavens.  They were some of the first things that were created and here I am, closer to them than ever before. And then I look down and see the lights on the ground and see all else that was created.  I used to think that shooting stars landed on earth... That they made that connection between the heavens and the earth. Is that really such a crazy idea? That God would give us something so beautiful and mysterious that draws that connection between us on earth and those in the heavens?

I look out my window as the stars begin to disappear, I find comfort that they are really always there and that I might see them again.  I see the new opportunities of the day as the city lights up below me and the sun rises beside me.  It is a new day full of things to be thankful for as well as those moments to go to God for help.