The Stars Always Amaze Me

UPDATE 3/18/2012 2:28P CST:  When I wrote this post on June 29, 2012, I still believed in some sort of God - just not the god of the Bible. Since then, I have left that belief altogether and have become an undefined agnostic.  Regardless, enjoy the post by looking at the world through the innocent eyes of a child.

I love things that are bigger than I am.  Things that boggle my mind.  Things that the experts can explain, but my simple mind sees only God.


Tonight, getting home from Nature Camp, where my sister, who has a degree as a Naturalist (no, that doesn't mean she did her thesis in a nudist colony) took care of my six squirts while my wife and I went on a date, the kids had to go right to bed.  Everyone fell asleep immediately - except Frederic - Juaca Baby, as I call him.


Frederic has a tough time going to sleep.  He loves to get out of bed and play, helping his little brother out of bed and keeping him awake well into the night.  Sometimes, he'll sneak downstairs and find our various hiding spots where the candy is stored and have a ball.  Other times, he'll find any container that can hold liquid and make concoctions out of water and anything else that can go in water, which is, well....anything.  We have thrown away more moldy something-or-others than Kleenex from a month of family colds.


Tonight was no different.  Frederic got to come downstairs and sit in his chair and enjoy the hustle and bustle of my bride and I, sitting around chatting, blogging, and staring at each others smokin' hot bodies.  Ok, maybe a stretch, but hers is most definitely so.  Mine....I'm starting to sag in all the wrong places.  In truth, we were actually cleaning and waiting for one of my wife's friends to come for the weekend.


While cleaning, I took the garbage out and happened to glance at the dark, moonless sky.  I was taken aback at the beauty.  Stars were everywhere.  Bright ones, surrounded by hundreds of dim ones, providing a perfect backdrop for satellites orbiting by.  I rushed in to grab Fred.


We went out in the driveway, folded up his train blankie, and laid down, our bare backs against the smoothish concrete.  For an hour, we played games like, who could find the biggest triangle. (I won that one by cheating.  I picked three stars from each horizon.).  Or, who could find the perfect square.


Fred was fascinated by the bright stars.  Two satellites glided past in a similar orbit going different directions.  A small plane flew overhead with red and green lights on the under-wing tips, bright whites flashing in even intervals, and a yellow incandescent-ish light on the tail.  The engine sped up as it neared the runway approach out of town and disappeared over the tree line.  A star blinked in my peripheral vision and yet could only be seen by the both of us if we kept flitting our eyes past it, never really looking directly at its position.  In the distance, a brighter satellite flew by - maybe a high altitude plane.


As always happens when I stare at the stars, I couldn't get my mind off of wandering into thinking how small and insignificant I was.  The conversation with Fred (6) turned to God.  As any six year old, he spoke confidently of God's enormous size.  How God could bridge the distance between us and the millions of miles in between, to the nearest star.  How God's head was bigger than the whole world and all the worlds in the sun.  How his arms could reach out and push two stars together.


I listened with intense interest, interjecting once, and getting thoroughly rejected, because his older sister, Laura, had told him it was true.  So I listened.  When he was done, I spoke of my understanding of God, His Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Very simple.  No complexities.  He didn't care.  The stars were his image of God at the moment and explained perfectly what he knew of Him.


I realized right then and there that I was free.  I was free to tell my son what I knew of God without the guilty feeling that I needed to convert him then and there.  I didn't need to push my son to believe what I knew of God.  He would get there.  God, in His time, would reveal Himself to Fred.


We got up and went inside.  Inside the house that God was too big to fit his nose into and yet, as Fred said, lived inside of anyway.  He went to bed happy and fell asleep.