in the hollow of his hand

Yesterday we read in Isaiah. I think it will take me a lifetime to understand that book.

There are many things it will take me a lifetime to understand. Like why some people leave this earth so soon, or why others seem to take a while to get here. How healthy hearts can just stop beating. Why car breaks and marriages fail. That patience takes practice. How sometimes the best way to learn is to learn to listen. Or why the heart, with its capacity to make us feel so whole, can sometimes make us feel the opposite. And how the death of something, like a falling leaf or a falling star, can be so beautiful.

This summer I took a friend to a favorite spot to look at the stars. I promised an impressive view, but when day turned to night, clouds hovered, intent on dragging their heels across the horizon. I kept looking up in hopes they would hurry. My mood matched the meteorology until an hour or so later when the clouds cleared. We stood so tiny under the tide of the Milky Way, and tried to connect the dots. There were so many stars our eyes hurt. Comprehending something so big is like trying to cup the universe in your hands.

Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with the spam and comprehendeth the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance?

And I will bring the blind by a way that they knew not; I will lead them in paths they have not known: I will make darkness light before them, and crooked things straight. These things will I do unto them, and not forsake them.

One thing I do know, something I am slowly beginning to understand: As vast and incomprehensible as life and the universe which surrounds it can seem, the single most important thing to the shepherd of us all is the worth of an individual soul.