Sunrise

If you live in Wichita Falls, Texas, and were outside on the morning of March 13th between 7:30 and 8:00 a.m., you got a treat! That happened to be the time I was mounting my 800cc Boulevard for my ride into work, a front row seat to one of the most soul-stirring sunrises I've ever seen.


As I nosed my beast to the east, the sky was already afire with crimsons and golds. The clouds which served as a willing canvas to the Artist's strokes brilliantly displayed these colors upon their curves and edges in hues never captured by man's palette and in detail unreplicatable by a brush. The purples on the periphery will never be seen on Blu-Ray. 

Photo by Peter Duncan

What really made tracking my bike on the highway a challenge was that the vista changed with every turn of the tire. The deep, dark colors gave way to brilliant oranges and yellows as the crescendo built toward the appearance of the sun.


In the next quarter mile, the details began to fade as pastel-yellow light rose like a sheet in front of the purpling clouds.  One of the things I'm not too fond of here in north Texas is that there are no hills or mountains to behold, but on a morning like this, the lack of topography provided an unobstructed view of the horizon. It was then that the sun crept over the rim of the earth looking like the jagged, molten edge of fresh welded steel.


As fast as it began, it ended. The sun had risen and the normal colors of day settled in to Tuesday.


Then I remembered to breathe.


As my ride continued, I wondered about God. How many mornings did he put such works of art on display for his children to delight in and to savor but then received no credit for his work. "Did you see that sunrise?!" I might have exclaimed, but did I thank him that all of life is not gray, that there are these works of art meant for a single moment that he brings forth to us minute by minute, day after day after day?


One of my favorite books is Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton (free for Kindle on Amazon). In it he describes how we get jaded by the mundane, but God delights in the repetition of sunrise upon sunrise upon sunrise like a child delights in their daddy doing somersaults:

The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again;" and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition of Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore.

So on that morning, one heart-exploding "Bravo!" went up to the One who on my behalf that day told the sun to "Do it again!"