Ruminations from John Conrad

​It has been too cold to run outside (down below zero one day) but this morning was around 17 so I thought I'd try it. The treadmill is just plain boring. Anyway I stepped out the door at 5:45 am standard time. As I ran past the dairy Kara and Jenna were feeding the baby calves. Kara shouted "Good morning, grandpa! Happy Birthday!" I shouted back, "Thanks but now I am old!" (69 today) She retorted "Not yet, grandpa!" That made my day.
The sky was brilliant with stars in that spectacular way you only see in the clear desert sky. Orion has shifted westward until it approaches the western sky and the Big Dipper has similarly shifted until it is just a little north of straight east.
Everything in the sky seems to move around. Even the sun and the moon have predictable patterns but they are in the same place only once in a while. There is an exception. Growing up, my brother James pointed out to me that if you look at the two stars in the middle of the handle on the Big Dipper you can follow straight over to the two stars on the side of the Little Dipper. When you follow the handle on the Little Dipper at the end you find the North Star or Polaris. Polaris stays in the same place in the sky (at least to the naked eye.) If you use time lapse photography and point your camera at the North Star overnight, your picture will show concentric circles of light inscribed by the traveling stars. Amazingly the light I could see from Polaris this morning had been traveling for about 400 years.
We talk about everything revolving around some point i.e. "his world revolves around his work." It is amazing that so many dazzling and big heavenly bodies that immediately draw our attention are not reliable sources of direction because they keep moving. There is nothing wrong with these other lights but their location must be described in comparison to the one that doesn't move.
We all need a point in our lives that is constant and unmoving. I am glad I have found mine. We need a rock, a foundation, a fortress that cannot be moved. Without this, even the beauty of life and creation becomes chaotic. "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein." Amen.