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Dear Friends of the Fellowship of the Blog,

A few days ago NASA thrilled us with the magnificent and beautiful pictures of the Sombrero Galaxy, taken from outer space by the Hubble Telescope.  This fantastic glimpse of our Heavenly Father’s handiwork is said by scientists to be a “mighty collection of 400 billion stars, some 28 million light years from earth! Such incredible numbers strain our ability to comprehend.  Then, to show God’s precise care for unique individuality, the Bible tells us He named every star!

Yet, more amazing is the fact that 400 billion stars are just the first course to an infinite menu of our God’s immeasurable heavens. I say “immeasurable” based on Jeremiah 31:37.  There, The Lord God Himself, reinforcing His steadfast Covenant with the house of Israel and Judah, likens the IMPOSSIBILITY of His breaking that Covenant to the IMPOSSIBILITY of measuring the Heavens above.

Breathtaking, isn’t it?  The Heavens cannot be measured, yet our Creator God can fill it all.  With the sweep of His hand, He gives us earthlings an eye-view of His splendor that we can see without a Hubble telescope: an eclipse of the moon, the five naked-eye planets in our solar system,

Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn; a flashing comet; and that favorite of little children – a host of friendly, twinkling stars.

A young father shared with me how he listened to his four-year-old son “shining here for God” as he told his little friend this rhyme.  The father said, “As I heard him evangelizing his little friend, I suddenly realized what Christian Mother Goose is all about – it’s God’s truth a child can handle.”  An amusing contrast of linguistic complexity is the version of Theodore T. Toad, a curious character in the Christian Mother Goose books who prefers his own lofty version of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Theodore pontificates thus:

Scintillate, scintillate stellar diminutive;
Deity hath established thine abode, definitive.
Preeminently poised aloft terrestrial,
Deity’s illumination suspended, celestial!

Praise The Lord, the little lights of children (shining here for Jesus) shine above Theodore’s thesaurus. And what a beautiful sight those myriad little lights must be to the “great cloud of witnesses” in the heavenlies.

During World War II tiny lights from pinholes in the blackout curtains were sufficient to guide enemy bombers to their targets in our city of Liverpool.  So it was a serious offense to allow any light to shine from one’s home. This gave rise to the famous war slogan, “Put that light out!”

War and darkness go together; that’s what we soon learned, and darkness brings its own brand of misleading tricks.  I once waited at a bus stop in the midst of a blackout.  I was behind a long queue of people – or so I thought.  But the line never moved, so I cautiously reached out in front of me and found that the ‘queue’ was actually a long line of sand bags!

Everyone dreaded the blackout, but the moonlit nights were a joy to behold.  Unfortunately, they were also the beacons of opportunity, lighting the way for German bombers, thus prompting the air raid sirens and anti-aircraft fire which together jarred us from our sleep with regularity!  Until all homes with garden space were issued their own small Anderson Shelters, we raced to a community air raid shelter not far from our house. It was almost hilarious, joining the motley assortment of “Wee Willie Winkie” runners, in all kinds of hastily donned nightwear; dashing to the shelter as the sirens spurred us on.   Gas masks bobbed everywhere, except on faces.  My job was to grab the Mickey Mouse gas mask for little brother Peter. The Mickey design was for very young children to help ward off their fears.

But in spite of the darkness of war, the light of good humor soon began to twinkle.  Newspaper cartoons arose with comedy lines heard in the blackout.  Letters to the editor appeared telling of funny air raid incidents.  My favorite typified the spirit of Liverpudlians: It told of an elderly couple who were going as fast as they could to the air raid shelter when the wife cried out, “Bill, do go and get my dentures – I left them in the bedroom.”  Just then a bomb whistled by and exploded with a bone-vibrating bang.  Bill yelled back above the din, “What do you want them for?  They’re dropping bombs not ham sandwiches.”  The well-known Liverpool humor remained irrepressible, lifting our hearts for six long years, until the “lights” came on again.

As I look back on those war days, I’m struck with the resurgence of the phrase, “Put that light out!”  Only this time it’s another kind of war with far higher stakes!  We see the light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ being challenged all around us – in all corners of our society we hear, “Put that light out!”  Can the light of the heavens be put out by mere man?   Impossible!  Neither can the Light of Him Who made them!  Jesus, speaking to the Pharisees in John 8:12 said, “I am the light of the world, he that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.”

What a gracious invitation to poor lost earthlings who, as I once did, wait behind sand bags of ignorance in the dark, expecting to get somewhere.  Life, light, love, peace and joy follow the footsteps of Jesus Who welcomes us all on that pathway.

Recently, the Kepler telescope was launched on an interstellar pathway to see if possibly “earths are very, very common; that we have lots of neighbors out there,” quotes NASA. May I say, emphatically, that this earth, this blue diamond planet, is not common!  Earth is lifted into paramount exclusivity by the Son of God.  This is the only planet in the whole universe that God chose for His Son’s birth; the only planet that bore the first footprints of Jesus as He walked here as both God and man; and above all, the only planet in the whole universe that the atoning Blood of Jesus was shed upon!  There’s a Royal family on this earth, walking in the footsteps of Jesus, and royalty is not common!

Light is flooded throughout the pages of Scripture.  From Genesis 1:3 where God said, “Let there be light: and there was light;”  to Revelation 22:16 where The Lord Jesus calls Himself “The bright and Morning Star.”  Such a beautiful name for the One Who made those 400 billion stars in the Sombrero Galaxy. And while the world strives for so-called ‘stardom,’ there is a true stardom for the children of God – a stardom promised in Daniel 12:3: “And they that be wise shall shine like the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness, as the stars forever.” The little four-year-old “Twinkle, Twinkle”  evangelist probably didn’t realize that he was already on his way to shining brighter than the Sombrero Galaxy!

Thanks for walking in the Light with me today…Blessings and Cheerio!

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Christian Mother Goose®

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