And Abram said, “You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir.” [God] brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your descendants be.” And he believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.

–Genesis 15:3, 5-6

The story of Abram is a familiar one, with God using the sky’s stars to illustrate the magnificent promise to one solitary man. In Les Miserables, Javert sings “Stars, in their multitudes, scarce to be counted, filling the darkness with order and light. You are the sentinels, silent and sure, keeping watch in the night.” Indeed, we may see the stars God points out to Abram as eyes of sentinels, a living witness that God may one day keep His promise to the Patriarch of our faith.

Now, as we prepare for the coming of Christ, we have another such example of God’s faithfulness toward his beloved people. In the night sky over Bethlehem we have all the example and fulfillment we need, for our Savior has been born so that we might know the faithfulness of God and gaze back up into a landscape of his covenants.