Sunrises

From the 9th floor of the Sheraton Oceanfront in Virginia Beach, Virginia I was able to watch a beautiful sunrise yesterday morning. It was awesome to watch the sky go through the color changes that lead up to the appearance of the sun as an orange ball that seems to rise out of the ocean.

Watching the sun come up I noticed something. When it first appears not only does it look orange instead of the bright yellow we typically think of, but for the first few moments you can actually look right at it without having to squint. I suspect it has something to do with the angle it’s at relative to the atmosphere that is causing the sun to look orange and obscuring its brightness just enough that we can get a look at it.

This reminded me of something in scripture. In Exodus 33 we read the account of Moses getting the chance to see God. Moses asked God to show him His glory. God replies that He will cause His goodness to pass by and allow Moses to see His back, but will He would cover Moses so that God’s face was not seen. God let Moses see as much as He could without overwhelming Moses to the point of death.

I am thankful that God knows us well enough and loves us enough to create opportunities for us to see Him in ways we can take and understand. For me, that usually translates into something that wouldn’t be meaningful to anyone else, but speaks directly to my heart. It is tempting to wish that we could understand and explain everything in life, but the older I get the more I think that when it comes to the big issues in life we are better left trying to discover and understand. Why? Because that is what causes us to continually seek God. If I could explain God, had a full understanding of who He is and what He is about, would I really be likely to daily seek to grow closer to Him and know Him better? Probably not.

Yesterday evening shortly after dark a full moon radiated brilliantly off the water outside my hotel. It was equally awesome to the sunrise that morning. I tried to take pictures of both with my cell phone, neither does any justice to what I saw.