The Stars above Sing the Might of the Lord

The following poem is a pantoum, which means that its basic structure is built on the repetition of lines. In poetry and song, a surprising amount of variety and beauty can be generated by using certain elements over and over.

Perhaps that's an example of how human creativity reflects God's image. Much of Creation's beauty is surprising in its consistency. Have you ever wondered what it would be like if the sky showed a totally different number and layout of stars every night? What if the sun rose in a different part of the sky each morning, birds changed their feathers and songs from day to day, and rainbows regularly shuffled and intermixed their colors? Would we appreciate the variety? Or get bored quickly, as do many spoiled children showered with endless toys?

Maybe our reaction would be uneasiness; it might be hard to believe that "the Father of the heavenly lights... does not change like shifting shadows" (James 1:17, NIV) if He kept rearranging those "heavenly lights" drastically and obviously. If He regularly changed His mind about how His firmament should look, who's to say He might not change His mind about more complicated matters, such as whether to keep His promises to us? Even on the human-to-human relational level, it's a lot easier to trust someone who is basically consistent than someone who has a history of unpredictable reactions.

Granted, people who always tell the same stories or keep harping on the same theme are boring. But even more than with poetry, human beings display a surprising amount of variety within their consistency. And a surprising amount of depth within the basics.

God is even more like that. Maybe that's why it's a lot harder to get bored exploring nature than watching television.

You don't hear many people complaining about "having to look at the same old stars tonight."

The stars above sing the might of the Lord:
Though they have no voice at all to give sound,
They speak of His power without a word,
For their beauty is seen the world around.

Though they have no voice at all to give sound,
Their praise shines out plain to all eyes that will see,
For their beauty is seen the world around,
And they speak of great wonders still yet to be.

Their praise shines out plain to all eyes that will see,
Through the mark of the Power on which they depend;
And they speak of great wonders still yet to be,
On the day when the world that we know will end.

Through the mark of the Power on which they depend,
Human hearts can dream of a world to be;
On the day when the world that we know will end,
Greater joys await than our eyes now see.

Human hearts can dream of a world to be,
Yet without God's Word we would never know;
Greater joys await than our eyes now see,
For He Who prepares them has told us so.

Yet without God's Word we would never know;
Only through His love do we dare to dream,
For He Who prepares them has told us so,
Of a world beyond where pure joy will gleam.

Only through His love do we dare to dream,
And the light of His love outshines the stars;
Of a world beyond where pure joy will gleam,
We all have His Word of what will be ours.

And the light of His love outshines the stars--
They speak of His power without a word--
We all have His Word of what will be ours.
The stars above sing the might of the Lord.