Wednesday, December 16, 2009

METEOR SHOWER

Around three o’clock on Monday morning, I couldn’t wait any longer. When I went to bed the night before it was raining furiously, but the weather forecast said that by 3 a.m. the sky would be clear.
So I got up and went over to the window facing east to see if the stars were out. The weatherman was right. The skies were clear, and the stars sparkled brilliantly.
I knelt on the love seat so I could stare out the window, but after a few minutes of watching for a shooting star, my neck started to hurt, and I had to decide whether to get serious or get back into bed.
Just as I was about to give up my heavenly quest, I saw one. It was a thin but long downward streak in the eastern sky. Unlike other times when I had sat under summer skies watching, this one was clearly a shooting star. No doubt about it.
So, instead of getting back into my snug bed, I found my bathrobe and headed down to the kitchen to pursue more miraculous visions.
The sliding glass doors were clean and clear, and they faced eastward, but the Christmas lights from the front of the house reflected clearly against the window, forcing me to take a daring step. I turned around a kitchen chair and opened the door. I knew that it was below freezing outdoors, but now I could gaze directly into the clear evening sky.
In the silence I waited, slowly turning my head from side to side just in case a meteorite strayed from its appointed location. I wondered to myself about how wonderful it was to be able to see these marvelous streaks of light coming predictably on the same day each year. Suddenly there was another. This one was a thick and short streak, like an accent mark or apostrophe angling down from right to left, like a teacher’s check mark on a test, but without the bottom part.
I wondered some more. These shooting stars were like “mini-miracles” coming into view, but only visible to those who had the patience and warm clothing to witness their brief visit to our world.
In the distance I heard a sound. The oil burner was going on. Of course, after all the glass doors were letting cold air in. Another streak, another “miracle” I thought. Then I hear the refrigerator go on. I suppose that happens often, but most of the time nobody notices. Then another streak, and then another. What a miraculous night this was turning out to be!
I saw the lights of a plane in the distance. People were going from somewhere to somewhere else, each with his or her own itinerary, traveling perhaps thousands of miles in a matter of just a few hours.
As I began to feel the chilling sir, all of a sudden I had a remarkable insight. Here I was, shivering on a December’s night to watch streaks of light in the sky as though they were some sort of miracle, but all around me were these things that were incredibly made, even by human hands, which no one pays too much attention to. Meteorites exist only for the second it takes for them to flare through the sky. Then they are no more. My refrigerator has been faithfully serving our family for twenty years, and that oil burner warms our whole house, I never gave them a second thought. And that jet in sky? I marvel that birds can fly, much less people. Aren’t these also true wonders which God mysteriously provides for us?
I’m glad I saw some shooting stars that night. It was probably my best shower-watching night ever. But what I discovered in the simple sounds and the sights of the night was much greater. be able to see these marvellous just in case a meteorite strayed from its appointed location.