Starry night.  I thought about Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh's "Starry Night" this week as I contemplated a smartphone stand featuring "Starry Night" in a store online recently.  In 1888, van Gogh wrote a letter in which he connected what he called "a great starlit vault of heaven" to what he considered to be the fact of "God."  As I reflect on the countless times I have looked into a crystal clear night mountain sky to take in the millions and billions of stars above me, the Milky Way sweeping before me, the Big Dipper rising to the north, I cannot help but agree with van Gogh.

    

     Sure, some will say, this spectacle is no more than a marvel of evolution, an astonishing picture of the universe's capacity to grow and be.  Though I do not disagree, when I compare the staid skies of the rural Midwest with the starry abundance of the mountain landscapes, I remain awestruck by the mystery implicit in creation's dance of life.  And it is this mystery, this mystery of simultaneous presence and absence, that pushes me beyond the black and white categories of my humanness.  It is this mystery that makes me think that although we may know the universe, we'll never know, fully, life.  It is therefore the stars, the "starry night" that opens our eyes to what life is--and can be--the door to God.

     We're always looking for more.