Guys, like children, often have a reputation for being drawn to shiny things. I suppose you can extend that to some women when it comes to diamonds, though that might just be all those diamond commercials speaking. Anyhow, getting back to business.
The Perseid meteor shower is tonight. Nerdy but totally cool..ish. Shooting stars are such a spectacle, so romanticized as a sort of fleeting beauty; a moment of bright something. They are great. They are also usually smaller than a grain of sand, which is not so impressive. I like the surprise of it, the flash; or maybe I'm drawn to the tragedy of witnessing the cremation of a piece of old sand.
Unfortunately for my need to be dazzled, it's cloudy tonight.
That makes me think. I'm pretty sure that if we never saw them, they'd not be called "shooting stars." They'd probably just be labeled as nothing more than space sand burning up in the sky; out of sight, out of mind.
What I find surprising now that I'm thinking about this stuff is how impressive they are to me, when while I'm looking for them I am ignoring the 2,000 or so stars visible before my eyes. Not only that, but one of those bright dots is actually a galaxy, made up of 400 billion stars. That's insane! And bigger than a grain of space sand. I know these things, but they don't impress me the same way because I don't see them in the same flashy way as I do meteor showers.
This bothers me, because it makes me wonder what else I might be missing by covering up real awe with my fleeting desire to be entertained and dazzled by something relatively insignificant but so very shiny.
"And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith."
-Galations 6: 9-10
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Good thoughts, Teo. I am learning to notice and savor the little blessings... Having JUST enough change to pay for lunch, my brother popping by my room to listen to LOTR and move my boxes, or just the fact that a lonely hurting girl who I had pretty much given up on ever finally making friends with to actually called me...
You are sooo right. I think we only see what we are used to seeing and shrink from what is different or unknown. Beautiful shiny things are an exception...