All the Stars

Being outside on a trail at night is a very different experience than a hike during the day. You need to watch where your feet are going more than in daylight, and your hearing is heightened. Without their daytime details, familiar surroundings look different as silhouettes. You might see bats flying around overhead or hear owls calling.

A night hike can be a disorienting yet rewarding experience. When on the trail at night, take a moment to stop and look up through a break in the tree canopy. Take in the multitude of stars overhead. If it’s a clear night and you’re away from city lights, you can see thousands and thousands of stars from just your particular spot on Earth.

Even with some light pollution, the night sky is full of twinkling stars. There are so many more stars than those you can see. And God made them all. He gave each star its own name. He knows them all so well that he remembers each and every one of them. Their lives are much longer than ours and have different life cycles, sometimes ending in an explosion!

Our God is big, powerful, and loving. Like he knows the stars, God also knows each of his children’s names. However, he is so much more intimate with us than just knowing our names. He knows you better than your closest friend knows you. God knows your thoughts, your dreams, your desires, and even your future. Just as God made each of the stars, he meticulously created you, too. In fact, the same elements that are in stars are also in us.

God loves you and wants a strong, meaningful relationship with every one of us. He wants you to share your thoughts and desires with him (even though he already knows them!) and wants us to ask him to map out our futures according to his plan for our lives. Consider that the God who made all those stars loves and cares for you. The multitude of stars in the sky should make you feel a bit humble but also incredibly special.