Covered In Stars

A Reflection on the Psalm for January 9th, 2022:
The Feast of the Baptism of The Lord

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​Psalm 104

R. O bless the Lord, my soul!

O Lord my God, you are very great. You are clothed with honour and majesty, wrapped in light as with a garment. You stretch out the heavens like a tent. 

R. O bless the Lord, my soul!

You set the beams of your dwelling place on the waters, you make the clouds your chariot, you ride on the wings of the wind, you make the winds your messengers, fire and flame your ministers. 

R. O bless the Lord, my soul!

O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all; the earth is full of your creatures. Yonder is the sea, great and wide, creeping things innumerable are there, living things both small and great. 

R. O bless the Lord, my soul!

Living things all look to you to give them their food in due season; when you give to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are filled with good things. 

R. O bless the Lord, my soul!

When you take away their breath, they die and return to their dust. When you send forth your spirit, they are created; and you renew the face of the earth. 

R. O bless the Lord, my soul!

Is awe uniquely ours? It’s been 42 years since I first knew awe, and yet when I make the interior space and reach back to that moment, I can still feel the electric fire of it crackling within me. I grew up in Toronto and never got the simile ‘as countless as the stars in the sky’. There were 17. I counted them. When I was fourteen, I spent part of the summer on a tall ship sailing through the Great Lakes. We only made landfall occasionally, keeping sail on night and day. A few days of rough weather yielded to a clear calm night, and I was standing the middle watch in the wee hours. I say standing loosely because my new friend and I were actually sitting, practically lying down; we’d snuggled our shoulders between the wood beam of the bowsprit and the point where the metal of the port and starboard hulls met each other. We were mid-giggle, when I lost my breath. I couldn’t speak. I had looked up and seen my first sight of the night sky in the absence of the competing light from a major city. I started to cry. My friend asked what was wrong. When the moment of wonder finally receded enough, I managed to stretch out my arm to the sky and choke out, “I can’t even fit my pinky between two of them.” I didn’t know enough to seek Jesus yet. I didn’t know He was seeking me. I didn’t recognize His voice in this moment, but He was speaking in the sky He had made.


And the sky was singing back.
The waters were singing back.
Light and fire and flame.
Wind and cloud and sea.
Dust and flora and fauna.
All are singing back.


In the shepherds’ fields, a song rang out loud and clear.


‘Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those who he favours!’


Once He proclaimed His favour on it all. It is very good. Animals. Angels. Andros. All. We continue to exist in the curve of His smile. And so He comes to redeem, to buy back His own. Our Creator joins us and the grass in our antiphonal call and response of carbon and oxygen. And a day comes when He stands with His bare feet in the mud beneath the waters of the Jordan. He carries a breath with Him below the current, and rises to release it. And heaven breaks loose for a moment on Earth.


We are in a small slice of time right now. In Nova Scotia, helping to slow an illness, we’ve been asked not to join in singing His praises. I’m a cantor and I miss the call and response of the psalm. I miss the voices joining as we lift Him up together. It seems, though, that my solitude is only an illusion, a symptom of my limited perspective. While we can’t sing, the stars have got us covered.




Noreen Smith

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