Star light, star bright,
First star I've seen to-night?
Then we would see who could count the stars as they appeared. One, two, four, five, seven, eight, ten, twenty, fifty, eighty, and in a little while we all would be lost, both in arithmetic and in wonder.
They call a man who watches and studies the stars an astronomer, and the astronomers have tried to count the stars, and partly by counting, and partly by guessing they tell us there must be between 2,000 and 3,000 millions of stars and each one is different, for one star differeth from another star in glory.
We cannot count the stars, but God can. He counts them all and names them, for He made them and the stars are not little tiny sparks of fire, but great wonderful worlds. The great sun that lights and warms our world is just a star, and a little star. Every star we see in the sky is a sun, hundreds of times bigger than our sun. It is because they are so far away that they look so tiny and so small. Some of the stars in the Milky Way are a hundred thousand trillion miles away. Think of a hundred thousand trillion miles. Try and write out a hundred thousand trillion. You put down the figure 1 then you write 100, then 100,000, then 100,000,000, then you write 100,000,000,000, then you write a hundred thousand trillion like this, 100,000,000,000,000,000; and that is the distance some of the stars in the Milky Way are from our sun.
The light that travels from some of these faraway stars takes millions of years to travel to our earth, and light travels fast, 186,000 miles a second. No wonder little ones like to look up into the sky on a clear cool night and say:
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are,
Up above the world so high.
Like a diamond in the sky.
When the blazing sun is set,
And the grass with dew is wet,
Then you show your little light,
Twinkle, twinkle, all the night.
Stars, just like boys and girls, are different. Each has its own way, and its own light. There are white stars, and yellow stars, and red stars. You have seen a white hot iron, and you know that when it begins to cool it gets yellow and then it gets red, and then it gets black. That is the way with stars, and perhaps the hottest stars are white. I do not know, but I like to think that just as God counts the stars and names them so he calls every boy and girl by name and cares for each one. We live in a big world but God is greater than sun and moon and stars.
The Bible calls Jesus a star. It gives Him a star's name. It calls him "the bright and morning star." The morning star leads the world into the light of the new day and so Jesus leads us. The sailor is guided over the trackless sea by the stars. The traveler over the desert picks his path by the help of some star, so we too find our way to God by keeping our eyes on Jesus.
There is a story of a young girl who had lost her way. She was lost not in the forest, or on the sea, but right in her own home. She had lost the way to peace, to happiness, and to a quiet heart. One night she had a dream. She was in a deep, deep pit, and there were no steps, no rope, nor ladder. She gave herself up for lost and then falling on her knees and looking up she saw a piece of blue sky and one star. When she saw the star she began to rise. It seemed so strange that she said, "Who is lifting me?" and looking down she found herself at the bottom. Again she saw the star and began to rise, but looked again to see who was lifting her and found herself at the bottom. A third time she fixed her eyes on the shining star, and kept looking until she found herself lifted out of the deep pit, and she was safe. Then she awoke and said, "I see it all now. I am not to look at myself, but at Jesus, the bright and morning star."
When Sir Harry Lauder was in America he was walking with a father and a little boy down one of the streets of New York. It was in the days of the great war, when service flags with a star were hung in the windows. The little lad loved to point them out. "Look, father," he would say, "there's a home that has given a son to the war." "Look, father, there's another star." "Look, father, there are two stars." Then the lad, looking up at the Evening Star that had appeared in the sky, said, "And look, father, God too must have given a son, for there is a star in His window." Yes, God so loved the world that He gave Jesus. Kerr
See The Star - Christmas Worship Song
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