Count Your Blessings #77 – Big Skies

One of the things I love about being on holiday is that I reconnect with how big the sky is.

It helps, of course, when you are sat on a beach where the sky seems so much bigger anyway. Sometimes it’s like the sky and the ocean are merged together to form a single complete continuation. Sometimes though the ocean reflects the sky so that it forms a funnel.

While we were in France we saw some fabulous skies.

One day we went out to Chateau de Dinan which is a huge rock formation sticking out into the Atlantic. It’s only connection to the mainland is a huge stone arch. It’s like it is defiantly saying “attack me if you dare”. There is nothing between these rocks and America, other than Atlantic Ocean. As I looked out the sky felt huge.

Another day we went to Quiberon. Quiberon is a peninsula that sticks several miles out. As we traveled that day the sky was low and it was raining. Our hopes of a good day weren’t high as we sat under the shelter of the car’s estate boot for lunch. The sky certainly wasn’t big then. Being true Brits though, we stuck with it. It was still raining when we decided to go swimming despite the cold and the rain. As we entered the water the rain stopped and the sky started to expand and grow. At one point a huge black cloud stretched out in front of us like some huge space ship inspecting the small planet beneath it. At others the sun broke through to reveal the true expanse of the sky.

The other night Sue and I were out late in the Lake District with friends (that’s another story). The Moon was up and the stars were shining. We decided that there was still adventure to be had and things to be seen so we headed up Kirkstone Pass to be as far away from light as possible. The Stars and the Moon gave another view of the vastness of the sky.

When I was younger the vastness of the sky used to make me feel small and insignificant. When I became a Christian I saw the sky differently, I saw that the vastness of the sky was a confirmation of God’s great love. God could have chosen to completely disregard this tiny little planet in the middle of the vastness of universes, but He didn’t. God chose to send Jesus to this earth for this people. That makes this earth and this people massively significant.