A blessing on the interstate

My eyes followed the sunset as we drove the interstate Friday evening.  It played tag through the trees, hid behind the hills, darted out of sight.  But then there it was, straight ahead.  A blessing to end the day.

In the midst of our ugliness

A few weeks ago I was visiting with a friend in the cafe of our local book store.  Looking out the window I saw a glorious sunset and couldn't resist going outside to take a picture with my cell phone (the only camera I had with me).  At the time all I could think was how I wished the cars, the parking lot, the neon signs, and the utility poles weren't sharing the scene with the sunset.
Often on my way to or from work I am so moved by the beauty of the sun and the clouds that I want to stop the car and gaze on it without distraction.  Even if I could stop, there would almost always be distraction in the form of our man-made landscape.
It was like that this morning - glorious skies, the light of fall that I can't begin to describe.  I wanted to take a photo but couldn't frame it without including utility poles.  I remembered this photo from the evening at the book store and my disappointment that it included all that commercial property.  I pulled it up on my phone and gave it another look.
That's when I realized that I had been blind to the true beauty of both of the scenes.
What did I see that I hadn't noticed before?  I saw God's glory in the midst of our ugliness - not isolated from it.  I was reminded that God is always "in the picture", even when we have focused on something else.

Brushed by Glory

"Ruthless Trust is an unerring sense, way deep down, that beneath the surface agitation, boredom, and insecurity of life, it's gonna be all right.  Ill winds may blow, more character defects may surface, sickness may visit, and friends will surely die, but a stubborn, irrefutable certainty persists that God is with us and loves us in our struggle to be faithful.

A non-rational, absolutely true intuition perdues that there is something unfathomably big in the universe (kabod/glory), something that points to Someone who is filled with peace and power, love and undreamed creativity - Someone who will reconcile all things in himself."  

Brennan Manning, from "Ruthless Trust"

I spend my weekdays behind a desk, inside a building, away from the open sky.  But as I drive to work each morning and then home again in the evening, I am often brushed by kabod as I see the sun rising and setting.  There have been times that I've been tempted to pull to the side of the road and sit, looking at the sky in awe.  It is easy to understand why heaven has always been thought of as above us, in the sky.  Yesterday I had a longer morning drive than usual as I was going first to my dentist, whose office is a 20 minute drive away through farmland and empty fields.  The sky was glorious, the sun bright, the clouds flirting with the sun.  The open fields were lined with bare trees silhouetted by the sun.  

I wasn't able to take pictures, and even if I had, they wouldn't have captured the glory of it.  But photos can remind us of that feeling that we've been brushed by kabod, that feeling that stops us in our tracks and silences us.  These photos taken by my husband do that for me.

May you look at the sky today and feel the brush of Glory.  May your hearts be filled with peace.

A wayside sacrament

"When I admire the wonder of a sunset or the beauty of the moon, 

my soul expands in worship of the creator."

Mahatma Gandhi

 

 

The late afternoon-early evening view from my deck 

I had planned to catch up on some household chores after work today, but fatigue and the beauty of the evening sky convinced me that those chores could wait.  I took Ralph Waldo Emerson's advice.

Never lose an opportunity to see anything that is beautiful.
It is God's handwriting - a wayside sacrament.