Do you remember working to learn the right answers so when the questions were asked you could raise your hand and speak the answer, receiving acknowledgment for being a good student? Try this one: Who is God to be compared with? What answers might the exiled Israelites have been hearing in their place of foreign captivity? The stars and the moon? The thunder and the lightning? Are the forces of the universe to be feared and served?
The voice of Isaiah sounds strong and clear: No one compares to God, the powerful Creator who dreamed up the stars and the moon. Look to the night sky and take comfort. The One who made those beautiful lights cares for the world and all that is in it. God has named the stars, tends them, sends them on their journeys, and knows they are all in their place. The stars bear the witness of humans, whom he compares to grasshoppers and sprouts that live briefly and are blown away. The stars tell the glory of the One who put them there.
When we walk through the world without seeing, with our heads down, we miss not only the incomparable and powerful but the broken and lowly. Walking with the Creator we discover a rich witness in creation as to the imagination and power within our reach.
Can we become students again, students in the classroom of creation? Might the questions posed each day by the change of seasons and the witness of faithful rhythms be good companions for our majestic and brief journeys? What is concealed in plain sight by the One who imagined and brought all into being?