When I Consider The Heavens

Something that I've been thinking about recently has been the stars.  This past summer, I spent many nights sleeping out under the stars with campers, and even on the weekends I would lay out there for hours with friends just hanging out and looking up at them.  I love the stars.  There have been few times that I've been in more awe of God than when I am looking at the stars.  Especially if you're in an open field with hardly any trees or light pollution around you and basically all you can see is the stars.  It makes me feel small.  Insignificant.  Yet at the same time loved.  The God who created the heavens and the billions upon billions of stars knows MY name and knows exactly what I'M going through.  Complete and utter awe.
If you look back at the Old Testament, especially Psalms you see David praising God a lot.  One example, and what I just read this morning as I've been going through the Psalms chapter by chapter is Psalm 8.  David opens up by saying, "O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth!  You have set your glory in the heavens."  By the way, tidbit:  When the word "lord" is in all caps in the Bible, it literally means, "Jehovah", or "Yahweh".  So what David, the king of all Israel is saying here is, "O Yahweh, my God, our king, how majestic..."  He later repeats himself in v.9 by saying that exact same verse.  But in v.3-4 is where I am focusing.  "When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is making that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?"  David is in complete awe and wonder of God by looking at the stars and seeing His handiwork.  He feels small and insignificant.  Yes, this is David we're talking about here.  David, the king of all Israel.  David, the guy who killed Goliath.  David, the guy he led armies into battle.  David, is a huge, huge figure in the Old Testament.  And great and mighty David is seeing the stars and the heavens and saying, "Wow, God, I'm humbled.  You're so awesome and you're so powerful, yet you choose to pay attention to me."
The reason that this sticks out to me so much is two words:  Light pollution.  Tonight if you were to go out and look at the stars you would see only a fraction of what David and the rest of the Old Testament figures saw.  In those times, they didn't have street lights, they didn't have porch lights or house lights or headlights or flashlights, no, it was complete and utter darkness.  The only light was possibly a campfire or the light of the moon and the stars.  So when you take that and relate it to nowadays, there is so much pollution in our world that they didn't have and they saw God so much easier than we do.  They saw STARS, we see stars.  I wish that I could go back to those days and climb to the top of a mountain on the clearest night and just look at the stars with no pollution whatsoever.  No wonder they were in awe of God. 
But how often do we have pollution in our own lives that take away from the beauty of Him?  We have these things in our lives, this temptation or distractions that try to drown out his voice much like light drowns out our visions of the stars.  I heard it said once that to get an hour of complete silence captured on video, one must take about 2,000 hours worth of footage.  I know in my personal life that is so true.  Just today as I sat down to read my Bible my phone started buzzing from a text, then my mom wanted to talk to me then my mind started wandering...
Point is, we have so many distractions and so many things that Satan uses to pry us away from Christ and drown out his still, small voice.  Just like light pollution makes it harder to see the stars, so these distractions and temptations make it harder to hear God's voice.  So I ask you, and I challenge you (and myself) what is it in your life that's clouding your vision of Christ?  What are the distractions that make it hard to hear His voice?  And how can you rid yourself of those distractions so that you can hear Him and spend time with Him?

--DyingAnOriginal