Do you remember what happened in October, 2024, on social media? Strident political posts were replaced by something else – photos of dancing lights in the night sky.
Aurora borealis.
"Aurora" for Aurora, the Roman goddess of the dawn, and "borealis" for the Roman god of the north wind, Boreas. People across the United States—people who were not nature nerds, people who didn't usually go out of doors at night—were posting photos of the northern lights. Photos taken over rooftops, backyards, cornfields, lakes. Some posts came from as far south as Missouri and Texas.
Our daughter, Laura, who lives in metro Grand Rapids, pulled into her driveway after a late evening meeting and just happened to look up. "The sky to the northeast looked different than usual," she told me. "I wondered why there was a colorful haze." Muted greens and pinks and white. Then she remembered. There was a chance to see the northern lights that night.
She texted her husband and told him to come outside. He had put their kids to bed hours before. They stood in the driveway nearly half an hour, taking picture after picture. "You see more of the colors when you take pictures," she explained.
After the display had faded, she looked up again. Stars! That's how big and bold and colorful the aurora borealis had been – it had masked the handful of stars she can usually see from her urban neighborhood. "I never expected to see the aurora here," she said.
And this wasn't even the first aurora show of 2024. Some nighttime gazers in lower Michigan had seen the aurora borealis in May and August, too. I had missed those displays because I was too tired to stay up until the sky was truly dark.
Did you see them?
On a Thursday night in October, our daughter Barbara drove north from her house in metro Detroit to find darker skies in Tuscola County. She pulled off the road by a farm field, fastened her cell phone to a tripod, and watched the spectacle unfold. At one point she saw huge swaths of multi-colored light all around her – 180 degrees of glory.
At another point, a single white beam shone down to the horizon like a spotlight from heaven. "Gave me butterflies in my stomach," she said.
That same week my husband and I were camping near Petosky on the shores of Lake Michigan. While my husband was sleeping, I walked down to the beach hoping to see the Milky Way, something I never get to see from my downstate backyard.
When I got to the beach, a chill wind pressed against my face. I zipped my jacket tight and looked south toward the lights of Petosky that rimmed the steel-gray water of Little Traverse Bay. Waves rippled beside me, catching enough ambient light to break in white curls on the shore. When I looked up, there it was – the Milky Way. A broad arch of bright stars spread above me.
Then I swiveled my head to the north.
Was that a pile of white clouds on the northern horizon? Huh. I thought the sky was supposed to be clear tonight. Then I heard voices on the dune above me and saw three people, two men and a woman, holding their phones up to the sky. I hurried over to them. "Are you seeing northern lights?" I asked.
"Yes!" the woman said.
"My phone won't work for them," I said. "It's too old."
We introduced ourselves and the woman, Cathy, let me look at her phone, which had night mode. Wow! Green and red and blue and purple lights in wide vertical streaks over the lake. She texted me a few pictures.
But that wasn't good enough for me. I went to the camper to get Ed's phone, quietly, so as not to wake him, hoping his phone had night mode. It did not, but when I got back to the beach, one of the men suggested I try the time-lapse setting. "You've got to hold the phone very still," he said, "and let the picture develop."
And then I saw it for myself – blurry green and red lights pulsating on a phone in my own hands. It was incredible. I looked and looked. I said, "Holy cow" and "Amazing" and "Wow" and "Hallelujah" until I ran out of superlatives and simply laughed aloud.
As the four of us stood there, the stars got brighter, and then there were streaks of white going up the sky. I was now seeing the northern lights with the naked eye! There were patches of scarlet, too, at the edges of the white pillars, and overhead. Cathy and I lay flat in the sand to look up. I couldn't believe it.
After we stood up, Cathy let me look over her shoulder into her phone one more time and I saw turquoise and cerulean, amethyst and magenta, and stars peeking through the colored lights. I was breathing so hard it fogged my glasses. I had not expected to see the northern lights tonight – and here I was.
After Cathy and the two men had left, complaining about the cold, I stood beside the water and sang the opening line from a song by Tom Fettke based on Psalm 8: "When I gaze into the night sky, and see the work of your fingers . . .. "
White streaks shimmered and danced beside the Big Dipper above me. The silvery surf glimmered not far from my feet. The steady cold wind. The low rumble of stones being rolled up on the beach.
Entire verses from Psalm 8 thrummed through my head: "When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established, what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?"
What are we puny humans, after all?
And yet God cares for us.
I bowed my head, pocketed the phone, and went back to the camper to join Ed in sleep.
Now that Facebook knows I'm interested in astronomical phenomena, I get posts about aurora sightings on a regular basis – in the Upper Peninsula, Alaska, Norway, Iceland. I also get notifications about full moons, comets, and planets in alignment.
Something interesting seems to be happening in the sky nearly every night. Even when I cannot see it, the glory of God is shining, somewhere, somehow, all of the time. Even when we, like children, are fast asleep, or when we, as adults, have lost our way.
Psalm 8 also says this: "You have set your glory above the heavens. From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise."
I think of our grandchild, Skylar, asleep in her crib in her fleece pajamas. She lies on her back, arms spread wide, completely relaxed, her little snores mingling with the wave-like noises on the sound machine. The eye of the camera on her monitor, which transmits a video of her sleeping body to a screen downstairs, emits a soft green glow. Her parents, washing dishes in the kitchen or picking up toys in the family room, hear the sounds of the monitor as they go about their work. If she cries out, inconsolable, they will drop what they are doing, and go to her.
Just so: The God who flung the bright colors of aurora borealis across the sky watches over us while we sleep. And comes to us in our distress.
Sometimes, by chance or by design, by luck or by putting ourselves in the proper place at the proper time, we get to see the glory of God on full display. Sometimes, when we need it most, God sends aid.
When this happens, may we pause and give thanks to whatever Power we name. May we be humble enough to praise.
"O Lord our God," the song goes, "little children praise you perfectly, and so would we."
And so would we.
Scripture: Psalm 8
Playlist: "The Majesty and Glory of Your Name," Linda Lee Johnson and Tom Fettke, 1979.