The sunset

I wish I could talk about the sunset all day, as I feel I could stare at it all day. 

There's a Berenstain Bears book that I read with my son, it's our favorite series and he loves to pick out the stories that I lecture him on the most. He constantly asks me to watch more television and I constantly tell him no, find something else to do. So there is a book they write titled "Too Much TV" 

At the climax of the book and the family has spent some time learning what it means to live without television (the only electronic device in the book) Mama says they are going to do something truly special so they all go and sit outside and spend the night watching the stars come out in the vast bear county sky. It really is beautiful. 

There is something about watching the day turn into night that really gets to me. Sometimes I wonder if I have some childhood memory that I repressed attached to it. But I can't yet think of one.

I have always loved to write. I haven't always been good at it, but I've always done it. Because I want my words to mean something to people the way words have meant so much to me growing up and so many times I have sat outside watching the sun set below the horizon as the birds and colors of the sky come to life for a few  moments of the day in the dusk. 

I heard someone say once that they were so happy that God provided us with live wallpaper that changes everyday. I thought that was such a great way of saying things. We always take for granted something that is in front of our faces every day. The sky is normal to us because it is just always there to be expected every single moment without effort. Imagine that. 

No Rock-a-doodle in our life time... Anyone??

The sky connects us as human beings. It doesn't matter who you are or where you came from, when you look up it looks just the same as anyone else that chooses to do so at the same time. 

"I see the moon and the moon sees me, the moon sees somebody I want to see.

So God bless the moon and God bless me.

God bless the somebody I'd... like to see..." 

Beautiful.. and expected, song. 

I do have a most memorable sunset. It may not be the most gorgeous or extravagant sunset that I have ever seen. But it is the most memorable. 

I was writing. As I like to do, keeping a journal at this time as I didn't have a computer, before I knew WHAT to write about, so it was probably something stupid as opposed to the memory of the unbelievable moment I was in. But that's ok.

I remember sitting in the back of my Humvee, it was mine - all mine, on a January evening in Kuwait. It was chilly so I wore the large black sweater the had assigned me. We had gone out on a mission a few days after arriving in country to pick up the rest of our vehicles and we were spending the night in the desert doing drills. Have you ever been in the desert in the middle of Kuwait, during a time of war, in the back of a Humvee that you were going to be sleeping in that night, by yourself, watching the sunset, with your M16 laying next to you, clip loaded attached to the handle of your weapon, smoking a cigarette, away from anything and everything you ever knew to make sense. 

Most people haven't. Maybe that's why this sunset was so memorable for me. I looked out over the sand that laid so vastly before me, and up into the sky that was so empty above me, and out into the world that was so beautiful around me, and just stared in awe. 

AWE

Of what laid before me

That's what God has given us with the sunset. He has given us beauty and majesty and awe. 

Take time to notice it.