The Night the Sky Opened Over Tromsø

In January 2023, photographer Shang Yang traveled to Tromsø, Norway, hoping to capture the Northern Lights. He had seen photographs, watched documentaries, studied the science of solar particles colliding with atmospheric gases. He thought he understood what he would see.

He was wrong.

When the aurora erupted that night — curtains of green and violet rippling across the entire sky, horizon to horizon — Yang lowered his camera and wept. "No lens could hold it," he later wrote. "I felt like the sky was alive, and I was very, very small."

That smallness is exactly what the psalmist describes. "The Lord reigns," Psalm 97 declares, and at His presence "the mountains melt like wax." The heavens themselves proclaim His righteousness, and all peoples see His glory. This is not a God we can capture in a frame, reduce to a formula, or fit neatly into our categories. Clouds and thick darkness surround Him. He is exalted far above all that exists.

We live in an age that likes to measure, explain, and master everything. But every so often, the Almighty pulls back the curtain just enough to remind us that He is not a concept to be managed. He is the Most High over all the earth — and the only proper response is the one Yang had beneath that blazing sky: reverent, joyful, holy awe.