Fireworks

        by Alice Valdal


    There have been a lot of fireworks around lately.  The opening and closing ceremonies for the Olympics produced lavish displays for us to watch on television.  The Butchart Gardens puts on a wonderful pyrotechnic show every Saturday night during the summer and last Sunday the Victoria Symphony ended their "Splash" program in style with Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture replete with cannon, church bells and more fireworks.  I thought I had "oohed and aahhed" enough.  

      Then God put on a light show that put the best of our earthly efforts in the shade.   Last week we experienced a spectacular thunder storm.  Lightning zigzagged across the sky, shot straight down to touch the ocean and flared in sheets of glaring light, some   white, some red.  It was awesome!  

      As if the lightning wasn't enough, we then had a meteor shower.  I sat outside in the dark, watching as light flared and streaked overhead only to vanish in the blink of an eye.  As I scanned the skies, hoping to see another shooting star, I couldn't help but be awed by the stars themselves.  The ones that stayed in their appointed places, pricking the dark vault of heaven with iridescence.  There are so many!
        "The firmament" is not a phrase I use often, but as I watched the skies this week, the opening of  Haydn's great oratorio, The Creation, sounded in my mind. "The heaven's are telling the glory of God.  The wonder of his work displays the firmament."  The text come from Psalm 19:1 
        Earlier this year our Bible Study group struggled together with Romans, a pivotal and often difficult book in the New Testament.  There, in Romans 1:20 Paul asserts that God's power and divine nature have been revealed in creation, so no one has an excuse to deny Him.  
        This week we have seen that glory and power revealed in the night skies over Saanich Peninsula Presbyterian Church.