When I was little, we used to sing “Away in a Manger,” in Sunday school. I suppose the Sunday school teachers thought that since we were little children we’d relate better to a Christmas carol about a baby.

i just liked the song, especially the part where it said, “the stars in the sky looked down where He lay…”

…because I loved to gaze at the night sky from my bed and wonder at the glittering stars that hung above the trees in our yard.

I’d think, those stars that looked down on the baby Jesus are the same stars that now look down on me. Wow!

Even as a very young child I got that. Jesus lived a long time ago, but the stars He set in space live a long, long time.

The stars saw Jesus begin His earthly life, and the stars see little me.

The stars saw Jesus and Mary and Joseph as they fled to Egypt. The stars peeped through His window when he slept as a baby, a boy, a young man, and then a grown man.

The stars watched as Jesus prayed on the mount of Olives before His crucifixion. The stars watched as He was dragged before the High Priest, and then, Pilate.

The Stars kept their vigil as their Creator lay silent and lifeless in a rich man’s tomb.

The stars rejoiced to see the breath of life return to Jesus.

I am an old woman now, yet I still gaze at the stars and wonder about God’s vast universe. I wonder where heaven is, and marvel that my heavenly Father sees me and remembers when I was just a little girl. In all those intervening years I still wonder the same things.

The stars will one day witness my own last breath, and then I’ll witness the earth from a very different vantage point.

I’m glad Jesus created stars— something so beautiful— to remind me that He is both near and very far, that He is aware of tiny me.

“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? (Psalm 8, The Message)