In her book, I Might Regret This, Abbi Jacobson describes the long road trip she took alone to hopefully find healing after a bad break up. While staying in a cabin in Utah she goes outside in the middle of the night to really take in how beautiful the sky is.
The stars out there, out west, are different, they’re brighter and bolder, and they make you feel that the world is so much more than you ever could have thought, that maybe you’d only been focusing on a tiny little corner. I know all those starts are there too, in my New York sky, but I don’t see them. There’s too much in the way. This was the space I was longing for and had been seeking out. But I could see now I hadn’t been yearning for that expanse to escape into, but rather to remember that I was a part of it.
I’ve been trying to figure out what it is about that last line that is so beautiful to me.
Two scriptures come to mind.
We all try to escape into the expanse, to get lost in it.
Psalm 139:7-8 says
Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
There’s no way to escape. But that’s not really what we’re after. What we’re REALLY yearning for when we stare at the beauty around us is the comfort of knowing we belong.
Psalm 8:3-4 says
“When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?”
He knows me. He cares for me. He doesn’t want me to hide from Him.
The God who made it all wants to me in His family. How crazy is that?
Now I want to go out into nature and see what it makes me feel.