The LORD says, “I will guide you along the best pathway for your life. I will advise you and watch over you. – Psalm 32:8 NLT
For this God is our God for ever and ever; he will be our guide even to the end. – Psalm 48:14 NIV
The LORD will guide you continually, giving you water when you are dry and restoring your strength. You will be like a well-watered garden, like an ever-flowing spring. – Isaiah 58:11 NLT
‘Call to Me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know.’ – Jeremiah 33:3 NKJV
When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own but will tell you what he has heard. He will tell you about the future. – John 16:13 NLT
Long before the compass (~206 BC), sextant (~1628), and the GPS (~1960’s -1970’s), people have used the night sky to guide and navigate from place to place. This can be especially helpful if you are in a wide-open area, such as a large body of water or flat, desert land. In the mountains where I live, it can be a bit more challenging, but is still doable.
I once took a course on nighttime navigation when I was in school. I don’t remember much about the course, but I do remember being amazed at what I could see in the night sky.
For those of us living north of the equator, a fun exercise is to lie on your back and watch the night sky. The stars will appear to rotate around a motionless point in the inky sky. That point is the north star (Polaris). It is anchored in place from our perspective –the only thing up there not moving. I hope to write more about this in another post. The reason we see motion in the other stars is because the earth is rotating at a speed of nearly one thousand miles per hour! (And so are you, although you don’t notice it). Stars appear to rise in the east, pass over us, then set in the west. Planets do the same thing, as do the sun and moon.
So how can you use the stars to navigate when it appears things are in constant motion overhead? It takes some practice, but it can be done. And for the most basic of nighttime navigation, the north star is a great place to start – provided you can find it.
If you can locate the big dipper (it is in the bottom left of the above photo), you can use the two outermost stars in the dipper’s bowl to point to the north star. Draw an imaginary line from these two stars about five times the length of the bowl into the sky. For simplicity of this post, I enhanced the stars in the big dipper and placed red dots in my photo to lead you to the north star. You won’t be seeing those when you are out there at night!
Once you locate the north star, simply draw an imaginary line straight down to the horizon. You have now located north. That means east is 90 degrees to your right, west 90 degrees to your left, and south is 180 degrees, or straight behind you.
Because many of us have become accustomed to all the artificial lights around us, it is easy to forget that God is revealing His glory and knowledge in the sky each day and night. If you can get away from some of the man-made light pollution, looking up into the night sky can be a great time for reflection and meditation on God’s splendor and majesty.
Jesus makes yet another remarkable statement when He tells us the when we believe on Him, He will send us the Holy Spirit Who will guide us into all truth and help us navigate what is to come.
God makes it clear that He will help us and guide us if we come to Him the only way He said we could. Not sure how to do that? Please see Got God?
Hope you have a great day.