#comet panstarrs

Last week, my family and friends stayed up for a night to watch the constellations. We barely slept, but waking up at 2:30 A.M. for the short walk was worth it—once our eyes adjusted, the galaxy began to twinkle into view one light at a time. Ursa Major & Minor (The Big & Little Dipper) quickly became my favorite as I showed them how to find it, like many kind hands had pointed out for me before. As we watched Polaris, the North Star, our music was the wind, hushed conversations, and occasional exclamations & laughter every time a shooting star danced by.

I was excited to see Comet Panstarrs—a year prior, I won a book on comets after answering some trivia, and thought that I would never get around to being interested enough to read it. Boy, was I wrong! Every page reminded me of the majesty of the Creator, and how blessed mankind is to know Him, and I couldn’t put it down. The comet was making its way into visibility, and based on calculations, it probably wouldn’t return again for the next 17,000 years, or ever. I was determined to see it.

And so, toting along my flashlight, binoculars, and book, I then realized that I didn’t have the proper magnification to see it. I hunted to see even a glimpse of it through our borrowed telescope (which showed beautiful details!), but the light was rising on our side of the planet, and the stars faded away.

In an attempt to see the ephemeral more clearly, we grasp at man-made instruments to capture and control it. A photograph that we can brighten, a clear image that we can burn into our memory, but by the time that we can even catch a glimpse, the daylight will have washed over it, rolling quietly, and carried it away on the waves of dawn.

But there is beauty to the adventurous spirit of man—if there was no drive to reach to heaven and see the greater, then the murmuring of the soul to witness fragments of their Creator’s glory through the created would be null and void and absent. There is always the next divine gift to grasp, and unless God is commanding us to lay hold of life in a different form, there is not really sin to be found. (As we would find sin in making the outlandish choice to go deep sea diving instead of feeding the hungry child in front of you, or to set sail opposite a city where you are being called to deliver God’s message of repentance.) There is merely grace—grace in fresh opportunities, grace in greater zeal, and grace to know the fleeting days of man on earth. It is by grace that we witness the temporary to feel the weight of eternity. The word itself is our measure of the immeasurable, much like the small but worthy word for the infinitely glorious GOD.

And so, we press on.

★.