Creator of the heavens, the night sky sings your glory.

Look at the stars,
each a different world larger and farther away than our minds are able to consider.

Yet you, O God, know their number.
Does each one have a God-given name?

You made them all many millions and billions of years ago.

But what does that even mean?

What is a year?
Once around the sun.
Three hundred and sixty-five turns from light to darkness and back again.

Our measurements of time are earth-bound,
tied to that nook of the Universe that is everything we know.

Yet even this limited knowledge is a gift from you,
who set lights in the heavens to mark days and times and seasons and years.

But you, O Lord, are eternal.
A nanosecond is a moment that stretches forever,
and galaxies form in the blink of an eye.

The stars tempt us with new ways of understanding,
a hint of reality that stretches out in every direction of time and space.

Dare we ask for a deeper understanding of what else you might intend for these worlds so far away?

Dare we yearn for them, to understand them?
To visit them?

Would it be a rebellion against your love,
to push our eyes and our minds beyond their limits?

Or is it a holy and good desire to know you
and the Universe you have made?

Creator of the heavens, the night sky sings your glory.
Loosen our tongues to join in its song, on earth as it is in heaven.