Let’s face it, there are times in our lives when we simply get grumpy.  “I’m having one of those days,” we say.  The dog has thrown up on the carpet.  The cell phone has run out of minutes right in the middle of an important conversation.  The potato has just exploded in the oven and now there’s no dinner and a mess to clean up.  And all in the space of a few hours.  Suddenly our worlds shrink to the size of every little thing.  And it’s hard to look beyond the smallness of our focus.  

There is a remedy for this which I believe is wholly Nova Scotian.

I was having such a day the other day.  It started with the discovery, after a day of heavy rain, that the door to our root cellar had been left open.  We now had a new underground water feature in the home.  That afternoon, in attempting to ferry into town from our island home in our little red fisheries boat for groceries, I discovered yet another water feature in the hull of the boat.  When the boat would not start, I peered down the aft hatch to discover the engine nearly submerged.  Then after dark, in need of more wood for our woodstove, I trudged out to the wood pile only to discover the protective tarp blown completely off and, quite naturally, the wood  soaked. 

“I’m having one of those days!” I said, actually using a different set of words.  Standing before the dripping woodpile, I threw my head heavenward as if to scream at the God of that heavenly realm, and that’s when I discovered Nova Scotia’s remedy for bad days.  The stars.

I have spent a good portion of my adult life in the capital of the United States, Washington, DC., only recently arriving at Shelburne’s beautiful shore.  The night sky of DC is yellow from its city lights.  One can barely discern the moon up there, let alone any stars.  But out on McNutt’s Island, the night sky and its full complement of stars is a wonder to behold.  Not only stars, but whole galaxies are on display like wisps of spun cotton.  For this Washingtonian, the Nova Scotian night sky is truly amazing.  I stood before the woodpile that night transfixed, my scream turned to silent awe.

When the Old Testament father of the Hebrew nation, Abraham, got to grumbling about having no children at his late age, certainly a problem if you are going to be the father of a nation, God led him by the hand from his tent late one night and pointed him to the stars as a reminder of the smallness of his concern compared to the greatness of God’s purpose for him.  It’s not a bad thing to remember when we are feeling the weight of our small things.  It’s called keeping a perspective.