To illustrate His great promise to him, God directed Abraham’s attention heavenward — to the stars.

And truly, to this day, there is no better, more breath-taking testament to His power and glory than the splendor of a night-time sky.

Recently, I wrote a story for the World on a guy who saw it up close.

Or, at least, closer than most of us will ever have the chance to experience.

U.S. astronaut Bill Pogue, a native of Sand Springs, was the pilot on NASA’s Skylab 4 mission.

In 1973-74, he and two crewmates spent three months aboard Skylab, America’s first space station, in that span orbiting the earth 1,214 times, and traveling more than 35 million miles.

Some of the late Pogue’s most vivid memories were from his two space walks.

Floating outside the station, with nothing to come between them, he was able to see the stars and the earth from a vantage few men have ever enjoyed. In later years, he had to look back at photos, he said, to remind himself that it really happened.

For believers, such scenes reaffirm for us something else that really happened:

That God created.

The stars, the planets, the very cosmos — He spoke all of it into glorious being.

Job’s lesson on that subject comes to mind: “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? … On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone — while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?

“…Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades? Can you loosen Orion’s belt? Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons or lead out the Bear with its cubs? Do you know the laws of the heavens?”

What Bill Pogue was thinking when he beheld all of that, whether his Creator crossed his mind at all, I don’t know.

But for me, just the thought of it makes me want to — like those morning stars and angels in Job — sing and shout for joy.