Have you ever tried counting the stars scattered across the night sky? When I was a child, I often rode on my father’s back out to the front yard and tried to count them. “One star, one me… two stars, two me… three stars, three me…” No matter how long I counted—until my neck ached and my mouth went dry—the stars never ended. I remember burrowing deeper into my father’s back, overwhelmed by that endless multitude.

The relationship between stars and human beings is truly beautiful. Under starlight, people often find themselves becoming gentler. From that light, we sometimes draw hope, sometimes comfort, and in sorrow we shed tears that seem to fall in harmony with the stars. When our hearts grow clouded, the stars can offer a silent but piercing rebuke. I often see stars in the early dawn sky, and whenever I look at those jewel‑like clusters scattered across the heavens, I feel something in my soul resonate with them.

A few weeks ago, I had the chance to encounter these beautiful stars more closely. One evening during dinner, our family was discussing various articles from the latest issue of Time magazine. Among them were the first photographs in human history capturing the birth of stars—images taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. As I turned each page, the scenes of star‑birth filled my vision as though magnified before my eyes, and I felt myself being drawn into the infinite chambers of heaven.

There I was—this small, insignificant person—invited into a sacred and holy realm where light must travel seven thousand years from Earth to arrive. From towering columns of gas—six trillion miles high—newborn stars burst forth like flames, each one emerging in orderly coexistence, large and small. Even there, God’s hand governed without the slightest error or deviation—ordering, beautifying, and sustaining the mysteries of the cosmos. As I gazed at the tender faces of stars born from the “pillars of creation,” and the planets spinning in their orbits, a reverent awe washed over me: “How great our God must be!”

“When I know what I truly am, I become humble, and I learn to live in true love… Ah—ah—my tiny, dust‑like existence in this vast universe…!” I stood speechless before the photographs, unable to move.

In the scale of this cosmos, our lives—long if a hundred years, short if fifty—pass in the blink of an eye. Seeing this, I felt the supports I had leaned on in this world crumble within me. “To think that the great God has come to this nothing‑of‑a‑being, to show me His love—and that He walks with me moment by moment!” The realization struck me with overwhelming force, rising like a wave from the depths of my heart.

“Where can such love be found? What is the true work of this dust‑like being in the fleeting time given to me?” Holding the photographs of the stars, I felt like a wandering soul at the edge of the Milky Way, grieving over the sinful human hours lost in war, hatred, and the strange currents of this world. “Such a great and good God is with us… Lord, please keep me from wasting even a single moment of the precious time You have given!” Suddenly, uncontrollable sobs burst from me. My startled children and my husband tried to comfort me, but the storm of emotion would not subside.

Later I learned that my eldest child had experienced the same awakening. With the realization—“I am nothing”—he went down to the basement, knelt before God, and offered himself in prayer. “Mom, I think I finally understand, even just a little, what humility is.” His eyes shone brighter than ever before.

“Human beings live not by the body but by the soul.” Tolstoy’s confession of faith gives us the key to cross the universe and touch the heart of God. The moment we cry, “Father God, I love You,” the infinite God crosses the vast heavens and comes into us.

Long ago, looking at the sky and looking at the stars, my beloved father cultivated his spirit under their light. Today, the stars he loved seem to pour down upon my own soul in a shower of wonder I cannot hold back.

— Yoon Wan‑Hee, November 27, 1995