I stand in voiceless awe.
I have no idea what I can possibly say to describe the sky that looms above me -- the stars, thousands of them, stretching out for miles and years, and I stand in inexplicable awe.
I am falling in love with Jesus all over again.
He is wooing me with the stars; he is captivating me with the cosmos. I am impassioned, flinging myself into him, and beneath this blanket of ebony darkness and dazzling light, he is cradling me, softly whispering, "This is for you, my love. I did this all for you."
I stretch my neck as far as I can beneath the sky, begging my eyes to remain open a while longer. I am nothing here, just a girl beneath the starlight, standing in the centre of the thick jungled Amazon rainforest. My Jesus, I think. I love you -- and it scares me. I taste the salt on my lips, wiping my damp cheeks with the cuff of my sleeve.
This love terrifies me, and not in a way where I feel threatened, but in the afresh recognition of both my finite smallness and his infinite grandeur. Of his strength, and his might, and his wooing, relentless love. And I am plunging headfirst into the ocean, my chest gasping more for this incessant love than for oxygen.
So help me, I am falling in love with Jesus again.
I fall in love with him every time I stop and stare at the stars, and this night is no exception. They are swallowing me whole. Part of me is grateful that a camera can hardly capture this splendor -- then they remain my secret with Jesus, and I clutch my mystery tight against me.
I see Jupiter. I see Orion's Belt. I see myself twirling in a pink dress running toward Jesus, and he is lifting me, higher and closer, and we are dancing among the constellations.
I weep as I watch his fingertips press into both me and the sky.
I weep as I watch four stars shoot, curling over the inky night.
I weep as I lean into the love that never stops saving me.
And I'm falling in love beneath the stars again.