I read about the meteor shower expected to be visible (in the southern United States) starting at about the time this post is published. I just walked outside. It’s overcast, so it’s a no go. But it leads me to story time:
I have only seen one meteor shower in my life, but it was a memorable one. Tonight I decided to do some research via Google and discovered that it was likely the Geminid Meteor Shower of 1998. I narrowed it down to this time frame, because I know that I was still in high school and that it was during December or January. This seems to be the only date that fits. The timeline I found puts the shower on the morning of December 14th of that year.
In the early hours of that morning, between 4 and 5am, I boarded a john boat along with two of my friends for a morning of duck hunting in the muddy Mississippi River Bottoms of Northeast Arkansas. It was still quite dark; and, as always, we used a spotlight to guide our journey through our normal ditch (as we call such bodies of water back home).
It was very cold; according to another site I found, it was certainly below Freezing. Because it was cold, I followed my normal practice of lying down in the bottom of the boat in order to shield myself from the wind. And as I lay there, I looked up to behold the marvelous sight of fireballs shooting across the sky. At the time I thought they were shooting stars (I had never seen a meteor shower. In fact, I didn’t know what a meteor shower was). There were dozens of them during our half hour boat ride. We hardly said a word about them afterward. I think we said a few things like, ‘Boy, there sure were a lot of shooting stars this morning.’ That was about it.
At that time I was not a Christian. I knew nothing about God. I had hardly darkened the door of a church, and the times I had done so had been when I was a very small child (I couldn’t remember them). But that morning, though I said little about it to my friends, I experienced true awe for the first time. That meteor shower has stayed with me through the years. I can still see it in my mind. Every time, like today, I hear of an impending meteor shower, I begin to long for the experience anew. But, alas, like tonight, I find an overcast sky.
When I first read Surprised by Joy, by C.S. Lewis, this was the first experience that came to mind as Lewis recounted his own experiences of Joy. A forgotten (for many) or non-experienced (for most) meteor shower in December of 1998 opened up to me the world of awe and wonder. This post is my way of giving a late ‘Thank You’ (almost 16 years late) to the One who stretched the shining dust across the sky and put me in place to see it fly.
I pray that someone else has an experience like that this morning.
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When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?
Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor (Psalm 8:3-5).
