As I walk out every morning to get the paper, I hear the rooster across the street and wonder "Have I denied the Lord yet today?". That's a whole 'nother story. As I pause at the end of the sidewalk I almost always take 'a bearing' on Orion's belt and the North Star. I pause and think about our perception of stars - pinpoints of light in a universe of blackness that supports little beyond light itself. These interruptions in the darkness are an infinite combination of light years away from 'us'. I used to view stars as if the night sky was a huge black tarp and someone had randomly stuck a pin through millions of times. But in reality each pinpoint of light is typically larger than our own sun, capable of having its own set of planets in orbit around it and yet all we see is a small point of light! If one considers that the view from each 'planet' somewhere in universe is infinitely different, the night sky would be totally different as well. So, from our perspective, the constellations are extremely unique. The stars do not [do not] line up in a convenient pattern. The stars in Ursa Major, aka 'the Big Dipper' are light years apart from each other and have no relationship whatsoever. They are also random stars - scattered across the Milky Way that from our perspective just happen to "line up" to form the Big Dipper. Totally random! And yet ... from our perspective the one star at the end of the handle is the center point of our sky ... around which all things circumnavigate the sky! WOW! Who could have thought of such a concept? A guiding light in the night that has guided man in the darkness of the oceans for thousands of years! "Who is man that you are mindful of him?" said Job.
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