The final weeks of 2024 are upon us. Here in Kansas only remnants of the beautiful colors of Fall remain. Soon, we will be steeped in gray December. A new year follows. Then the winter’s dreariness gives rise to the newness of Spring, followed by Summer’s warmth. The winds of change buffet us along and we, too, usher in the new seasons of our lives. Through it all, “He [makes] everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end” (Ecclesiastics 3:11, ESV, emphasis mine).
I cannot fathom all that God has done, all that He is doing, all that He will do. Still, I praise Him. Sometimes I wonder about the why of it all especially when I see others struggling even though I know their painful circumstances and their trials—big and small—like yours and mine, are not a measure of God’s love for us. In fact, even in the struggle God works all things out for both our good and His glory. Taking hold of that promise, we need never doubt who God is nor the power of His love for us. His divine nature is real.
The evidence that God is present in our lives is everywhere. Satan prefers we focus on him and not on our Creator God. When we give the world and those of it our attention, our eyes grow dim and Satan’s job of tempting us and enticing us to sin becomes easier. The world clamors for our attention. Satan craves it, but leaving the noise, the chaos, the confusion, and our own busyness behind and simply turning our eyes to the heavens could change more than that moment for us. In it, we might find the path to hope, to healing, to restoration.
God does make everything beautiful in its time. I have seen it. I understand doubt and frustration and the search for understanding; however, standing in the darkness of a silent night, when I see the stars, serenity and peace wash over me. Finding God in this messy world might be as simple as choosing something like a star.
Humor me while I step back into my literature classroom for a moment. The mere mention of an author or one of his or her works brings back fond memories of my students and the time we spent together exploring the writings of classic authors whose words, I hoped, would leave a lasting impression upon their hearts and minds. Now retired, my heart for literature and the classic writers of old remains. The words resonating most with me today come from those I discovered to be authentic men and women of faith. These days, I return to them often and quote them in my writing, too.
Robert Frost is one of those. Rabbi Victor Reichert, a friend and neighbor of Frost’s, once said, “I hear the voice of God in his poems. He was deeply spiritual. He was listening to God.” I hear that, too. The words in his poem Choose Something Like a Star allow us to experience the pause of which I wrote earlier.
There is something so personal in the darkness surrounding Frost as he fixes his gaze on a single star. That star, the one he calls “the fairest one in sight,” remains silent even as Frost implores it to give him a word or some direction to be remembered and called upon later. The poet desires much more than the star’s “I burn.” As the poem progresses, I am reminded that the contemplative moments of my own life calm me and settle my mind, and it is only in rising above the fray and stepping away from the world that I hear,
“Be still, and know that I am God.
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth!”
(Psalm 46:10)
Like Keat’s Eremite myself, I am an introvert who is comfortable with solitude. I find seclusion appealing, and yet, I know God created me for a purpose I cannot ignore. In that, I am reminded, “Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that [we] may be blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and perverse generation, in which [we] shine as lights in the world as [we] hold forth the word of life....” (Philippians 2:14-16a). In the changing seasons of my life and the lives of those I love, I hold fast to my faith in Jesus Christ and to the truth of God’s unchanging Word. God exists and is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. I see all around me His remarkable glory in creation making me ever-more aware, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5).
I pray as we enter this holy Christmas season and await the Savior’s birth that you choose something as simple as a star to slow you, to bring you hope and to lead you to Jesus, the one who heals and restores those places of your heart, your mind, and your soul needing it most.
Choose Something Like a Star
by Robert Frost
O Star (the fairest one in sight),
We grant your loftiness the right
To some obscurity of cloud –
It will not do to say of night,
Since dark is what brings out your light.
Some mystery becomes the proud.
But to be wholly taciturn
In your reserve is not allowed.
Say something to us we can learn
By heart and when alone repeat.
Say something!
And it says "I burn."
But say with what degree of heat.
Talk Fahrenheit, talk Centigrade.
Use language we can comprehend.
Tell us what elements you blend.
It gives us strangely little aid,
But does tell something in the end.
And steadfast as Keats' Eremite,
Not even stooping from its sphere,
It asks a little of us here.
It asks of us a certain height,
So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far,
We may choose something like a star
To stay our minds on and be staid.
"You keep in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you."
Isaiah 26:3
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