TWINKLERS

One of the delights of grandparenting is hearing these little people sing nursery rhymes with all their mispronunciations and off-key enthusiasm. Recently, I got a recital of this one:

Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are.
Up above the sky so high, like a diamond in the sky.

My memory has faded a bit on this, but it’s likely I sang that song in jest to my children when they were lots older (grade school age) as we enjoyed a crazy family summer sleepover in our back yard. The night sky was clear enough for us to see the blinking lights of airplanes headed to, or coming from, our local small airport. At times a pinpoint crawled across the sky, likely a satellite. And then came the treat of the night: falling stars, happening so fast that we could barely point them out in time. That night was one of my favorite all-time family experiences. Well, family minus one, because sometime during that open-air sleeping time, a slug crawled onto my husband’s face, and he left in disgust for the bedroom.

So here comes the “star” sign that caught my eye:

The biblical counterparts to this, I believe, are the parables about heavenly rewards. One is in Luke 19:12-27, called the “Parable of the Ten Minas.” (The same lesson, with the term “talent,” is also told in Matthew 25 and Mark 13). A “mina” was about three months’ wages, no small sum. The nobleman who dispersed these riches had to go away for a while “to have himself appointed king” (which, of course, refers to Jesus). When he returned for his servants to account for their investment, one’s investment ten-folded itself.  Another had quintupled the entrustment. Both were promoted to greater responsibility. But one did nothing with his mina.  He folded it a cloth and hid it. He didn’t even put in the savings and loan at 1% interest.  The story doesn’t have a happy ending for the fellow who just chugged along doing nothing for his master.  He had a chance to be a star or at least a twinkle. Instead, he moped in the darkness of his own apathy.

I find this story scary yet hopeful. We’re apportioned different gifts and abilities but we’re not to sit on our hands and do nothing. If we can’t be an asteroid that lights up the whole sky before it crash-lands, we’re to at least “twinkle” wherever God has placed us. That means to aspire after the character modeled by Jesus, serving and loving on others. Our Father has impeccable vision, and that faint twinkle of light (which probably described each of us in the span of eternity) is seen for how much it’s fueled by pure and fierce devotion to Him.