Silhouettes

Tonight's one of those nights I just so deeply enjoy. Had dinner with my cousin, got our Coldstone on for dessert, and swung by Starbucks for the drive home.

But on the drive home I was reminded. Although I like sunrises, and enjoy blissful afternoons in the sun, the most compelling time of day for me is the twilight. I swoon over silhouettes of blackened trees against the embers of the days sky being swallowed by the black quilt of night. This, this time is when I stare. And it's then that I am reminded of my sister writing of beauty being the things that draw us in.

To be drawn in elates me. It's peaceful to linger in the beckoning of beautiful things; to let the weight of bigness, smallness, vibrancy, normalcy, chaos, simplicity seep into our being and leave me a little more hopeful than before. I lean into this truth, this peace that settles deep, because it is here that I am paying attention. Not just to beauty, but to the Beauty-giver. I love this time of day because it speaks to the vastness of who God is I get a taste of that "perfect peace".

And is that not why He created the Earth initially? To allow us to experience harmony, harmony that we lost so long ago due to our ability to exaggerate and choose ourselves over divinity. But He's good like that, He leaves us tastes, glimpses of that which we hope for.

I'm finding that the more I'm choosing to pay attention, the more I see. Eyes opened to a vaster reality than which I have been living. A reality in which I see my depravity deeply and His goodness even deeper, and the chasm between the two closing slowly through my repentance and asking. I just keep finding that I can't do this for myself. I'm a messy person with self-protectiveness written all over me, but He's changing that. He's causing me to not see less of my ugly, but to see that the ugly does turn beautiful, like One Thousand Gifts said. That all things are grace because all things can transfigure. The ugly can't turn itself beautiful because ugly is the absence of beauty.

I watch the sun tuck away, leave the silhouettes dancing for a moment, only to soon follow underneath the black covers. And for a moment I stare, reminded to not miss it. To stop missing moments because of myself.