Job is often treated as a poetic book or just another piece of literature. However, the account is true–providing a shocking series of circumstances and thought provoking conversations that end with a face to face encounter between God and Job. Echoing the sentiments of creation in Genesis, God presents Job with question after question that require answers from Job. God does not need to know the answers as much as Job needs to know them. As the final few scores of verses close the book, two of the questions cite the Pleiades and the constellation Orion — both created beauties of the night sky — where God asks Job if he was capable, in so many words, of creating and controlling them. Of course, he nor we can.
These were my thoughts as I sat in my observing area with a sketch pad and my eyes as the area from Sirius to the Pleiades, which includes Orion, lay above a layer of incoming clouds over the Blue Ridge Mountains. The sketch is simple–only noting the major stars through the even layer of cirrostratus, the smudge of the Great Orion Nebula, and the larger smudge of the Pleiades. In the Spring time at mid Northern lattitudes this great line is nearly parallel with the ground, as if to underscore the remaining heavens above them. It is a sight well worth the time to record and study by any new admirer of the night skies. And, it was a wonderful evening to give thanks to the One who placed them where most of us could see them. No wonder He makes references to them to Job.
