We saw the stars!

If we were back in England, we'd be on camp for at least one week this summer. It seems a little strange to sit here in 30 degree plus temperatures and think a little wistfully about a muddy field in Wales, but this is the first year ever that L won't be on camp (yep, you read that right. He's been going since he was a baby!). I've been on camp for the last 9 years and last year we took J at 5 weeks old (and my mum. If you ever go to be assistant leaders on an outdoor camp while in possession of a 5 week old baby, always take your mother).

One of my favourite things to do on camp was to look at the stars. Being as the camp is in a small valley in a very rural part of Wales, there is no light pollution and the stars are amazingly bright. On a clear night, you can see the Milky Way. A few times we've taken campers bivouacking out on the hills and it's coincided with the peak of the Perseid meteor shower and I've gone to sleep watching shooting stars. (Just in case that seemed a little too good to be true, it's worth adding that at that point I'm in a sleeping bag inside an orange survival-bag-slash-reinforced-bin-liner surrounded by a bevvy of teenage girls chattering away.)

I hadn't seen the stars since we moved here. There are no street lamps here, but with the buildings so densely packed, there is always some light of some kind in the streets and so, like any big city, your chance of seeing the stars is fairly non-existent.

However, earlier this week, we saw stars! Electricity and water cuts are not uncommon here but when the power suddenly went out at about 9.30pm, it was our first power cut at night. And suddenly not only was our flat completely dark, everywhere that we could see was completely dark. Before that sounds overly dramatic, from our front window we can only see up and down our narrow, one way street so it wasn't exactly surprising that we couldn't see any lights. And after grumbling to myself about it for a few minutes, I realised that there might be an upside.

And so, leaning out of our flat window, we looked up and slowly, as our eyes adjusted, we could make out a handful or two of stars. I never thought I'd see stars from our flat's window! No matter how many times I look up at the stars, they never cease to amaze me, to remind me how small I am and how astounding it is that each of them are known by name. But also that the One who is mighty in power, who determines the number of stars in the sky, is also the same one who knows each of us so intimately. How great he is! The same yesterday, today and forever. The same in a canvas-covered field in Wales, the same in Turkey. The one who does not change, the one who will fulfil every promise he has made. How amazing, how wonderful!