I was thinking about this after hearing a recent sermon given by Paul Maconochie, the pastor at the Philadelphia Campus (attached to St Toms’ in Crookes, Sheffield). He touched on a theme that has always resonated with me – that as Christians, we are meant to be like stars.

Just think of the stars for a second*. They are beautiful aren’t they? And yet rarely do we look at them properly or consider their real power and what this represents.

Stars flood our universe in the billions, pepper our earthly skies, and yet on their own seem initially pretty insignificant. A solitary star barely registers at first, a tiny pinprick of light almost lost by the massive darkness around it. And yet the more we stare at it, the brighter it seems, until it is shining so brightly that it holds the capacity to flood our hearts with awe and wonder if we allow it to.

But it takes a conscious effort on our part for this to happen, to see this brightness. We often feel half-blinded, unable to appreciate the world as God sees it, and to come to a quiet solitary place where we can see such beauty is not always easy. And even when we succeed, we often fail to appreciate the real power behind a star. To many of us, a star is just a star isn’t it, nothing special? A planet, on the other hand, now you are talking! They are way more significant. Right?

Wrong!

Because while a planet is something that only shines because of the reflected light around it, a star has deep within its interior a fierce heat that gives it its natural power. And yet to avoid missing this, we need to go beyond just the brightness. To understand the power behind this and to acknowledge it.

And this is how we are meant to be as humans. Like stars, offering light in a dark world. Not overwhelming, not instantly impressing or wooing people to fall at our feet, not putting them off by being all froth and little substance, but instead – like the gravitational pull of a star that impacts the journey of another star – gently pulling them towards us, showing where the real power to life lies, gently nudging them back towards Christ.

And as I thought about this the other day, two people immediately came to mind, a little girl named Olivia who lives with her parents Chris and Bex in North London and a big boy named Matt who lives in Oxford. Both beautifully encapsulate this link between Christians and stars.



Take Olivia first who is just a year old (above). I look after her every few weeks on a Saturday morning. What normally happens is that we go and play on the swings in Highgate, feed the ducks and then and go and have coffee in some local cafe. Last time we went to Café Mozart at the bottom of the Heath and read books. And as we enjoyed the sunshine, watched the many dogs and their owners go past, we just bathed in being alive. Olivia usually broke into a gleeful giggle upon seeing the dogs, stamping her feet in excitement and going a bit mad, and it was blissful. But what I noticed also happening in Café Mozart was that every ten or fifteen minutes, someone would slowly walk past without initially noticing Olivia and then suddenly clap eyes on her. And they would break into the biggest smile. It was almost guaranteed. And Olivia more often than not responded with a smile back which invariably stopped them in their tracks. It wasn’t overwhelming but it was deeply powerful and you could see that something had happened, the natural conclusion of a slow build up from initial recognition to seeing something in her that responded deep to deep. Because although Olivia is only one, she responded the only way that she knew how (it’s funny isn’t it how a child who can’t speak, who understands very little in the way of language or about how the world works, automatically understands the very nature of a smile and what it represents and usually will smile back! How that can’t be from God I don’t know!). And whenever I saw Olivia interact with another human like that, I was reminded of the stars, slowly pulling us towards them and making us realise how special they are but not overwhelming or even initially impressing. It’s something more meaningful and, as a result, more powerful. Deep crying to deep.



And it’s the same with Matt (above). When I got to really know him last year as a close buddy, I saw the power that lay behind him and what Jesus meant to his life. But like a star, this power wasn’t overwhelming. It wasn’t even obvious until I had spent time in his company. He didn’t do or say anything really, didn’t demand attention (‘LOOK AT ME, LOOK AT ME, PLEASE LOOK AT ME’), flatter me or do anything. But something pulled me in, something deep that showed me a new side to Jesus. Because Matt reflected the power from within. And like one or two other very close friends, when I am with Matt I always look to Jesus. It’s inevitable. He points me there, showing what makes him tick, and making me realize that life is futile without acknowledging the power from within that both gives and sustains life. Like the stars, we are useless without this power burning deep inside us, useless on our own as an island state (as a species, we are clearly are not built to go through life without help and quickly crash and burn whenever we attempt to do so) but instead that we are meant to acknowledge this power and gently and ever so subtly nudge others back to the power within them also. And Matt does this. Beautifully.

As do others I know.

Gently, subtly, beautifully illuminating the only real power within this world. Not overwhelming us but pointing us to something deeper. Something so intrinsic that it sustains us. And as we focus in more and more on it, it burns brighter and rallies more against the darkness that is unable to swallow it because it’s the pure substance of life.

Jono

*Anything scientifically inaccurate in this blog is purely down to the author not really knowing much about science!