Mostly Starless, But Still Beautiful, Night

Outside, at night, in the winter, it's cold, so I bundled up before I stepped outside onto the back porch and frowned. I thought that since it was a cloudy night, I should try again the next night to see what I could learn from nature, but then I stopped and realized that just because it was cloudy out doesn't mean their wasn't anything to observe. Nature doesn't stop teaching just because it's cloudy.

I sat down on the back porch, tightened my coat, and looked up at the dark sky. It wasn't too dark yet and the clouds weren't solid, so I could see the clouds moving across the sky a bit, just slowly, sort of meandering across the sky. The clouds over the moon seemed to glow in a sort of eerie, yet beautiful way. The moon still shown even if nobody could see it directly, it's light could still be seen. Occasionally, in a break in the clouds, I caught a glimpse of the stars and couldn't help but smile at their beauty. I tried to count the ones I could see in a break in the clouds, but stopped because I realized it was silly to try and count the stars because there were far more stars in that same strip of sky that I just couldn't see. 

Just as I did with my walk earlier, I couldn't help but compare this night to the times I've stepped out of the car after returning from some late night school function, looking up, and seeing a sky full of beautiful stars, creating many constellations I that just don't see no matter how many people have pointed them out to me or how many fun apps try and draw them in the sky for me. Normally, I get disappointed when there are no stars in the sky, but this night, I tried to see the cloudy sky as moving too, just in a different way, and I did. The glimpses of the stars in the breaks in the clouds are obviously beautiful and stunning and show God's handiwork. The faint moonlight behind the clouds, which is just the reflection of the light from a small dwarf star called the sun, is beautiful too. The clouds cover up the stars and the moon as best as they can, but they can't do it forever or entirely. 

Just as the clouds can't cover the beautiful night sky forever, our sins don't cover us forever, as long as we ask for our forgiveness, then we are washed clean, white as snow, and our true potential and beauty is revealed. We are no longer covered by sin, by darkness, by clouds, we are clean, pure, white, and cloudless and our beauty and potential as a child of God is revealed.