lum.in.ous

adj: bathed in or exposed to steady light

I get really jazzed about the small things in life. For example...
A steaming cup of sumatra glimpsed through my bleary eyes' slits at 7:23 a.m.,
a particularly blackberry-flavored Red Zinfandel, after the bottle has been open for a minute or two...and after an exhausting day,
lightly cascading snow in the glow of a streetlight,
sixty degree sunshine warming my wintry skin,
street light colors streaking across the pavement at night...red, green, yellow, red,
children smiling sweetly - especially when they know I'm enraptured,
and stars...lord, how I love getting lost in the vastness above me.

The last time I surveyed the infiniteness of the heavens I can see was during trip to Lawrence.

I was running a little early to meet my friend Tyler, and I pulled off the road about 10 minutes before I got there. I eased off the highway and found a road that was so dark, it blended into the blackness of the horizon. Parked squarely in the middle of the dirt path, surrounded by silence, I turned up The Postal Service's Give Up album. Mood appropriately set, headlights off, blue VW interior lights glowing, car heated to the warmth of a July day, I took off my coat, and opened up the sunroof. The heavens expanded before me, and the synthesizer beat bleeped in sync with the stars' flashing. I felt like I could float up through the hole above me, and extend my body out the length of the sky, touching everything around me. I felt so small. It was fantastic.

I'm reading David Crowder's book, Praise Habit, and he has encapsulated Psalm 8, a testament to the heavens' beauty, in such incredible language. I don't know where this translation came from, but as I read these words this morning, I was transported back to that reflective November night off K-10.

God, brilliant Lord,
yours is a household name.

Nursing infants gurgle choruses about you;
toddlers shout the songs
That drown out enemy talk,
and silence atheist babble.

I look up at your macro-skies, dark and enormous,
your handmade sky-jewelry,
Moon and stars mounted in their settings.
Then I look at my micro-self and wonder,
Why do you bother with us?
Why take a second look our way?

Yet we've so narrowly missed being gods,
bright with Eden's dawn light.
You put us in charge of your handcrafted world,
repeated to us your Genesis-charge,
Made us lords of sheep and cattle,
even animals out in the wild,
Birds flying and fish swimming,
whales singing in the ocean deeps.

God, brilliant Lord,
your name echoes around the world.

My words can't do the majesty of the Lord justice. So today, I revel in the past realizations of smallness, and look forward to those life-imprinting memories to come.