“Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one and calls forth each of them by name. Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.” ‭‭Isaiah‬ ‭40:26‬

God flung the galaxies into the void like confetti, rejoicing in the stunning display, knowing that we would be completely unaware of their complexities for millennia.

“Look up at the sky and count the stars” the Lord told Abram. “So shall your offspring be.”

“When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,” the psalmist sang, “what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?”

Then one night wise men from the east lifted up their eyes to the night skies and noticed a new star, and they set out on a journey to follow it. “When they saw the star, they were overjoyed,” Matthew wrote.

Meanwhile, shepherds in the wilderness looked up in the darkness and saw heaven opened while angel song overwhelmed the night.

He is still calling us to lift up our eyes. To lift them off of our failures, off of our shame. To lift them up from our circumstances and from our fears. Lift them up and look to the heavens and be assured that the God who created uncountable myriads of stars keeps a count of the hairs on your head.

Lift your eyes to the One who is mighty to save; the one who sings over you; who prepares a place for you. The one who is coming on the clouds, who thunders from the heavens; who passes in a whisper.

Lift your eyes and see the one who parted the heavens and came down – down from a place of dazzling light to a dark stable; the one who came down into our darkness to lift our faces tenderly toward the light.