Moonrise

Tonight I saw one of the most stunning things I’ve ever seen. I was at a friend’s house on Gull Lake, and I noticed the moon shining bright orange out the window after we had finished watching a movie. We all walked down to the lake, which is about 150 feet down hill from the house. When we reached the bottom you couldn’t see the moon because it was behind the trees across the lake, but we stayed out to watch the stars. What we saw in the next few minutes was stunning. As I watched, the moon rose. I could literally see it make its way from beneath the trees, up into the open sky. I had never seen anything like that in my entire life. Coupled with the bright orange moon and the millions upon millions of stars, the night sky was beautiful.

I find it odd that the night sky is almost universally thought to be one of the most beautiful sights on all the earth. It is a lonely place, empty, and without any form of life. Yet, I could stare at it for hours on end and never cease to wonder at its vast openness, and the stars. Perhaps it is the stars that make the darkness of the heavens so appealing; pinpoints of light that shine, even when the deepest darkness surrounds them. And they seem to shine only brighter as the emptiness darkens. It is the perfect visualization of the hope that every Christian has, the Holy Spirit that leads us through every struggle in life. Even in the darkest times, and indeed, it seems that even more so in the darkest of times, the light of the Creator is seen all the more clearly.

We are made for hope, we need it to live. So much of life is spent desperately seeking for the fulfillment of our hopes, our dreams. We chase the hope of love found in another person, the hope of success, the hope of riches, and the list goes on. And, yet, it seems that most of the hope that we have in the things of this life are more like a shooting star, they flare brightly for a time, only to burn out into emptiness again as quickly as they came. So perhaps it is time for us to seek after a greater type of hope; a hope that can match the sun in its unrelenting power. A hope that not only lights up the darkness, but that completely overpowers it. It is such a hope that is offered for an eternity, and is found as easily as the emptiness is found in the failures of this earth. So seek. Hope, and life with it, is to be found.

-The Fallout





Psalm 43:5
Why are you downcast, O my soul?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God.


Psalm 71:4-6
Deliver me, O my God, from the hand of the wicked,
from the grasp of evil and cruel men.
For you have been my hope, O Sovereign LORD,
my confidence since my youth.
From birth I have relied on you;
you brought me forth from my mother's womb.
I will ever praise you.