When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars that you have established;
what are human beings that you are mindful of them,
mortals that you care for them?

Psalm 8:3-4

While I was on retreat in Maine this June, I did some experimenting with my camera. I aimed it toward the sky, which was filled with more stars than I ever see in Chicago. I tried to photograph them in the dark. I have a good camera, which I can manually control to hold open the aperture and expose the image for a long time.

The stars without the camera were incredible, but once I got the knack of photographing them, even more stars became visible. The camera allowed me to see further, and more deeply, than my bare eyes could.

Metaphorically, what are the lenses that help us to see more light? How long do we have to look, before the stars shine through?

Seeing these stars appear through the camera made me think about how much bigger than me everything is. My body, my eyes, (my mind) don’t have the capacity to stay open long enough to take in enough light to be able to see what is really there.

The psalm I included above asks, “what are human beings”, but the stars made me think, “what is God?” God, like the stars, is so far beyond my capacity to see.

Click on the image below to see more clearly the photo I took.