The Floorboards of Heaven

My mother-in-law had a phrase I always loved: "When You Look Up At The Stars You're Looking Through the Floorboards of Heaven."

Love that. I was reminded of that phrase this past weekend. After a wild Friday night of cleaning out the garage with my wife (it was actually much less lame than it sounded to type that) I took my dog and an adult beverage out to my back yard and just stared up at the sky.

Have you done that lately? (Not taken my dog and a beer out to my back yard, but just watched the stars?) It's so inspiring. In my opinion staring up at the stars really is a better use of 30 minutes than to watch "Dancin' With The Stars." But that's just me.

Looking up at the stars is as powerful and meaningful today as it was thousands of years ago when the Psalmist wrote:

"The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands."

Pslam 19:1

I thought about that verse and what makes star gazing so meaningful this past weekend. Here's what I came up with:

Perspective: To gaze out at the billions of stars, each one synchronized in its patterns and movement, and to realize there are entire galaxies out there that we can't see, puts so many things into perspective. Namely, that there is a God so awesome that he created all of this. And no matter how big I try to make my problems, I can never make them too big for God to handle.

Look up. Science was never my thing in school, but I did manage to learn that the Sun is a star that's 93 million miles away from the Earth. That's so far away that the sun's rays we feel today, actually left 7 years ago. That's 7 LIGHT YEARS away. To quote that annoying song: Unbelievable!

Equally amazing, is that the stars we see are even farther away than our Sun. So as I stared at the stars this weekend, I was seeing something literally over 100 million miles away from me. But what is the farthest distance I can see when I look out here on Earth? Maybe 100 miles, tops? I've been to one of those observation decks that say you can "See 7 States!" but that's nothing compared to what you see when you look up.

The point being, that by looking up to God, you easily can see more and accomplish more than if you only spend time looking for solutions here on Earth.

So many times, that's my problem. I've been looking at the wrong things. I've spent too much time looking behind me - worrying about things in my past. I've allowed myself to look down on myself, or worse, on others. I've spent so much energy looking for answers in things of this Earth. Instead, I should look up and look for God. It's quite a sight to behold.