Stars

After watching my two favorite movies this weekend (being sick does have it’s advantages) I realized that we are always interested in the stars. Gattaca, a movie about a guy who wants to be an astronaut and Wall-E, a story about a robot going into space, are sme of the best movies I’ve seen in a while. Something about those ‘great big balls of gas, burning millions of miles away’ inspires songs, stories, everything…

Why do we send astronauts out into the stars? Humans seem to have objectified stars to mean what we do not understand, but what we think is beautiful…  We do not understand a lot about the stars, yes we know their composition, yes we can guesstimate their ages, yes we can guess about how they were formed, but the interesting is that we rarely know exactly what they are. Unlike a micobe, it’s rather difficult to closely study a star, well if you don’t want to burn to a crisp almost instantaneously. It’s beautiful, but confusing as anything. Perhaps that is why we associate stars with Love.

What did they call Romeo and Juliet? ‘Star’crossed lovers. What do we call someone who is in awe of someone? ‘Star’struck. What do we call the person who we focus out life on? A northern ‘star.’

It is interesting to note that the stars, which can be used to describe love, are what brought the Wise men out of their tents to try and find the Christ child. For “when they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy,” at least that is what Matthew said about the situation. Why did our Heavenly Father choose a star to herald the coming of his Son? Perhaps He knew that humans are always looking up, sometimes to dream of the eternities, sometimes to wish that they could be somewhere else, sometimes just to enjoy the beauty that the stars bring. Perhaps He wanted to commemorate his Son’s birth with something a little more lasting than a song. Whatever the reason, I bet it’s written in the stars.