A Vast Expanse

We traveled through the night to get to Kota Kinabalu. It isn't the easiest way to fly, when you have four kids and arrive in another country at 3 a.m. with a very short time to deplane, get your berrings in an unfamiliar airport, go through immigration, gather luggage, check in for the next flight and find the gate before the flight leaves. Fortunately we made it onto the plane in the knick of time and were on our way out of Kuala Lumpur and on through the night to Borneo and the airport in Kota.


The second flight, the one that left Kuala Lumpur at 4 a.m., was blessedly empty. Literally only a tenth of the seats were filled. So after take-off we all spread out to lie down across our own row of seats, which felt like a marverlous luxery. Everyone of us was able to sleep.


Sometime during that two and half hour flight over the South China Sea, I opened my eyes and happened to glance out the window. It was that very dark hour before dawn, and the stars were huge and brilliant. They filled the sky outside my tiny window. I was half asleep and had to shake my head and blink a few times to see if it was a dream or if those many, many bright stars were real or just a dream. They were really there. I couldn't get over how many there were, how thickly spread they were in the sky, how big and bright their light. The contrast to the nearly starless, hazy skies I see out my window above the Huangpu river was amazing.


As I gazed at the stars for a few more minutes before closing my eyes and returning to curl up on my three airplane seats, I thought back to the only other time I may have seen stars like this. It was on the second story deck of my aunt and uncle's home in rural Pennsylvania when I was a little girl. I was amazed at the expanse of them. For a child raised in the suburbs, with street lights on every telephone pole, the night sky in this rural area was breathtaking.

"The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands.

Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge.

There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard.

Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the earth."

Psalm 19:1-4



I heard their declaration on my aunt and uncle's deck several decades ago. Last week again it was loud and clear!