It was early. I wished with everyone fiber of my being that I was back home in my bed instead of in my cold car with a piercing headache driving to work.
I adjusted the volume of the music playing, shivered, and looked ahead down the road. The sky was black.
A few moments later I glanced down to my cup holder as I reached for my coffee. When I looked up again, only seconds later, the sky was ablaze in color.
Pinks, oranges, whites, and blues mingled together in a collage of radiance. The sky that had only seconds before been void of all color was now an ocean of beauty and vibrance.
I stumbled for my phone in the passenger seat beside me, feeling the need to document this scene. I couldn’t find it. I felt the frustration building as the colors began to fade as quickly as they had arrived.
Then a thought struck me. Perhaps this beauty was meant to be savored more than it was meant to be shared.
I gave up searching for my camera, and instead, watched the sky. The splendor was gone within moments and I found myself overwhelmed by the sight I alone had seen on a back country road at 6:33 a.m.
I found myself all of the sudden grateful I wasn’t in bed at home. I was glad to be in that cold car, that early in the morning, with God’s beauty beckoning me to worship.
There is no beauty like God’s beauty.
I’ve seen it in so many ways recently. When the student who refused to nap wrapped her arms around my neck in a hug. When a kind man was late to a date because he stopped to buy me flowers after a particularly long week. When a snowstorm cancelled weekend plans and my family wound up spending an entire day together for the first time in months. When I couldn’t sleep after a panic attack, and spent unanticipated hours being comforted by God’s Word.
Often we look around and wonder, “why here? Why this?” We grumble. We murmur. We see the inconvenience and fail to remember the One who brought us there. How often in our spirit of discontentment do we miss the beauty?
There’s no beauty like God’s beauty and turns out, it’s everywhere.
Look up, dear one. The sky is ablaze in splendor right in front of you. It’s here in this place, and no other that you were meant to see it.
The Corner Shelf 