Good morning and welcome to the December 31st Musing.

It was just after sunset when I noticed it.    That light, hovering over the horizon.

Speaking of light…

What do you call a candle in armor?

A knight light

How do you arrest a beam of light?

You put it in a prism cell.

I have digressed… 

Having escaped the DFW metroplex for a trip to rural Texas, I was winding down a December evening’s hunt as the clock was squeezing the last light out of the sky.   

And then I noticed it…two fingers’ width above the western horizon, straining to be seen.    A star?    No, too bright, too early.

A google inquiry (yes, I hunt carrying my iPhone) told me it was the planet Venus.  It was just to the left and a little higher than the radio tower on the distant hill.  This tower, now alive, with its obligatory blinking light at its top and solid light halfway up its frame.

After a minute, or three, of packing up my hunting gear, I looked again…and now Venus has slid just below the highest light of the tower.

My eyes are now fixed.

Like watching the mercury fall on an old thermometer, or the ball atop Times Square on New Year’s Eve…ever so slowly Venus dropped, paralleling the straightedge made by the tower.

Now halfway between the tower lights…then even with the lower light… slipping to just above the distant vista… then…gone. 

Even more subtle, but perhaps more stark than the sunset, was this reminder that the earth’s rotation hosted this show.  And the earth, though a platform for the display, is really part of the display itself.   For it was then, that I looked up, and behind, to a chorus of stars trumpeting their arrival against an ever blackening ink cast sky.   

Similar to being fixated with a jeweler’s brilliant diamonds laid out on black velvet, I stare.

And as I continued my gaze, even having trouble finding the familiar constellations hiding among legions of stars that city lights never allow to be seen, I am overcome…

 And I am left with no thought but that of the Psalmist …

The heavens are telling of the glory of God; And their expanse is declaring the work of His hands. Psalm 19:1 (NASB95)

Yes, they are!

Rod Milton S.D.G. – 2