He took him outside and said, “Look up at the sky and count the stars – if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, ”So shall your offspring be.”
Genesis 15:5
“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone – while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?”
Job 38:4, 6–7
When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?
Psalm 8:3–4, KJV
He determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name.
Psalm 147:4
Praise him, sun and moon; praise him, all you shining stars.
Psalm 148:3
After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”
… Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.”
After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshipped him.
Matthew 2:1–2, 7–10
“I, Jesus, have sent my angel to give you this testimony for the churches. I am
the Root and the Offspring of David, and the bright Morning Star.”
Revelation 22:16–17
Stars have a beautiful place in the Scriptures. The book of Job speaks of the singing of the stars on the day of creation, and the book of Psalms offers a picture of intimate relationship between the stars and their creator, who ordains the movements of their dance and knows them all by name.
In the book of Genesis comes that magical moment when God takes Abram
outside into the desert and bids him look up at the stars. What he saw was not quite the same as we see in our light-polluted cities. If you can get away from the streetlights, car headlights, and house security lights, the night sky is ablaze with myriad stars beyond counting. “So shall your offspring be,” God said.
As the years went by, the time came for Jesus to be born – one of those stars of Abram’s descent. In the Bible he is sometimes called the Morning Star (i.e. the sun), and John the Baptist’s father Zechariah prophesies, regarding the birth of Jesus, of “the tender mercy of our God, by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace” (Luke 1:78–79).
We thank you, O God, for frosty nights and starry heavens. Thank you for the beauty and majesty of the wide sky above us, lifting our hearts, moving our souls, speaking to us of wonder and glory. Thank you for the clear shining of the Evening Star as night comes down, and the Morning Star, the sun that rises in such splendour, reminding us of Jesus. The stars are too many for us to count, dear Lord, but you know every one of them by name. How great is our God, how great is our God! In all times of our darkness, whenever our life passes through a night-time, remind us, God of our journeys, to look up at the stars. For we ask it in Jesus’ name; Amen.
