Month: March 2013

I love sunrises and sunsets. It does not matter if they provide the backdrop for an ocean view or a shopping mall. They are magnificent and stir something inside of me. They are the most photographed natural phenomena and I can not help but to pull out my camera anytime I see them, stop on the shoulder of the road to snap a picture usually falling short of fully capturing the beauty that my eye has witnessed. There isn’t much time to snap the photo as the combination of golden sunlight and countless colors will only last a few seconds. We often forget the speed that we are moving through the galaxy and take for granted the sunrise and sunsets. We often forget the vast expanse of the sun. Often, we only really reflect on it’s beauty as it makes its daily entrance and exit. In fact, the sun is always there whether or not we notice it. Throughout the day it’s directly overhead lighting our world, nurturing the landscape, and providing nutrients to the food we will eat. Even in storms with clouds that attempt to cover it, the sun is still there. It has not left us. In fact, if it weren’t for the sun, I can only imagine the complete darkness that would engulf during a light spring mist. Even in the dead of night, the sun is still there. Our world is seemingly moving, spinning away from it, yet its light relentlessly bends around the sphere and reflects off the moon. It is not as if it left us, it’s just that we forget it’s there. It seems the only time we remember the sun overhead is during the hot Texas summers and we can only complain about the heat. But thankfully the daily sunrises and sunsets faithfully wake us up to its glory. Yet, as glorious as this distant life-giving ball of gas is, it is still mere creation. It is but a pin-light beaming from the fingertips of its Creator. By the Word of His mouth, he placed it out there 93 million miles away to constantly remind us that He alone is the beginning and end of every day. He put it there to remind us all that even when we forget he’s over head sustaining us, that He is there even when our visibility is muted by the filter of creation. Today is Sunday, and millions of souls will be stirred by the magnificent glory of their Creator. Soon after, the majority of us will forget the glory as quickly as the fading brushstrokes of sunlight, and we will complain about the sanctifying heat; we will balk at the daily manna. Still there are some who will miss the beauty altogether to focus on the shopping mall in the foreground. We will fix our gaze on the creation which we see only by the light of the Creator, and we will make the fatal exchange. How can we be so blind when we’ve been given so many signs? How can we miss the sunrise for the shopping mall? How can we bask in the light, but not the Light? How can we lose our way when the Way is right in our path everyday? How can we believe a lie perpetuated in western culture by tragic celebrity examples when the Truth is there resounding like an eternal echo from the cosmos? Honestly, we can’t see, bask, believe, or find our way at all. Not without the Light.