Mosiah 16:9

 As the very challenging year of 2020 finally began to come to a close, the wonderful day of my birthday at the end of November came around. Along with many other wonderful gifts, I received a telescope from the Stewart family who lived a few blocks away and were among our best friends in New Haven, Connecticut. Having always been interested in astronomy, which was certainly evident in the research I was doing at Yale in pursuit of my Ph.D., such a gift filled me with excitement. What amplified that excitement was finding out within a couple days that Jupiter and Saturn were going to align closer than they had in over 800 years on December 21st, less than a month away. What a beautiful opportunity to use my very own new telescope!

I immediately began preparing for this upcoming opportunity. My wife, Bethany, and my nearly-two year old son, Aaron, helped as I put together the telescope in our very own living room so that I could have a practice at assembling the pieces well in
advance. The next task was finding a location that would provide a good viewing. Living in downtown New Haven with lots of light pollution, trees everywhere, and many areas closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this was certainly a difficult task. But after extensive research and scouting out areas, I was able to determine that East Shore Park would be thoroughly sufficient to view the upcoming "Christmas star". Then the final form of preparation was finding a day nearest to December 21st with nearly clear skies at sunset.

As time approached, weather forecasts generally agreed that out of all the nights within a few days of December 21st, the one most likely to have clear skies was Tuesday the 22nd. All other evenings were overcast and/or involved precipitation. So December 22nd at East Shore Park it was for us! Unfortunately, after arriving there and setting up the telescope on the destined day at dusk, the skies didn't look promising at all. Clouds continued to block the view of stars, particularly in the direction we intended to look. And as we waited 10, 15, 30 minutes, on up through an hour and a half, the sky only got cloudier. It soon became obvious that this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that we had prepared extensively for, was not to be for us.

As we drove home, I was filled with disappointment. We had done everything we could to ensure that this would not turn out to be a missed opportunity for us. And yet, the "Christmas star" of Jupiter and Saturn aligning did not present itself to us. In many ways, this seemed to only reflect the general year of 2020: careful planning for hopeful and exciting events leading to nothing but loss and disappointment. 

Thankfully, the Christmas season was so close at hand that I quickly began to remember a scripture from The Book of Mormon about Jesus Christ that had long been a favorite of mine:

"[Christ] is the light and the life of the world; yea, a light that is endless, that can never be darkened; yea, and also a life which is endless, that there can be no more death."    ~ Mosiah 16:9

While the combined light of Jupiter and Saturn that we had earnestly looked for ended up being darkened by the cloudy skies, we could at least rest assured that the true light of the world could never have such an ending. Of all the sources of potential light that we seek, I remembered that only one is fully dependable and can never be darkened: Jesus Christ. His love, power, and wisdom shine through even the darkest of times ranging from a global pandemic and loss of loved ones to uncertainty about the future and political contentions. How grateful I am for a Savior whose light I can trust will never be blocked by cloudy skies when I yearn for it. 

In the end, we still wished we could have seen the amazing "Christmas star" that was all over nearly every news platform. And even though it was blocked by the clouds, we at least walked away with a deeper love and appreciation for the true Christmas star, the light of the world: Jesus Christ.