Night of the Shooting Stars

All around me the night sky glowed, speckled with millions of stars. Breathing deep, I inhaled the cool, clear air of midnight. Everything was still; even the crickets were silent. The damp grass sank soft beneath my bare feet as I padded out to the wide-open spot behind the barn. Unfolding the old blanket I carried, I spread it loosely on the ground. It billowed up in the soft breeze, then settled down with a whisper. Easing back, I waited eagerly.

Each star shone with a brilliance I had never noticed before. Perhaps it was simply the hour. Midnights usually find me sound asleep, not stretched out in the lawn, watching the sky. But this! This was not to be missed. A meteor shower of this magnitude deserved observation. So here I was, waiting with bated breath.

I was not to be disappointed. A blazing streak flashed across the sky, followed by another. And another. I had seen shooting stars before, but these were bigger and brighter. I almost thought I could hear them fizz as they went streaking toward the horizon.

The Milky Way stretched across the sky, the millions of stars in its pathway shining like pearls. I found the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper, and Orion’s Belt. That summed up my knowledge of the constellations. The deep velvet of the darkness beyond the stars reached on and on, into a universe far from my comprehension.

A meteor blazed past, its tail trailing halfway across the sky. Immediately another one burst from the blackness to flare briefly before fading into nothingness. My breath caught in awe, and unconsciously I wiped a tear that trickled down my cheek.

God seemed massive and unreachable, and man a mere speck swirling in the vastness of a million galaxies.

The nighttime sounds reached me now, faint whispers from the woods beside me. The silent flight of the owl, the scampering of nocturnal creatures beneath the brush. Everything seemed sharp and clear under the dazzling heavens suspended above me.

A tiny star went shooting high into the atmosphere, and I breathed softly in appreciation. In the shadow of the much larger meteors, this one shone just as bright and trailed a longer tail. Strangely, I found this comforting and God, still massive but near once more. I settled back on my blanket to absorb the night. My favorite verse from Job flashed across my mind like the meteors: “When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy…”