As we grow older, our childish sense of wonder tends to fade - if we let it.
How do we preserve an understanding of the importance of sunsets, ladybugs on wet leaves, or a bedtime prayer? The little things that infuse beauty into ordinary moments? How do we teach old eyes to see anew?
On the first page of my favorite book, "The Little Prince" by Antoine de Saint Exupery, is a drawing of an elephant swallowed by a boa constrictor, or just a drawing of a hat, however you choose to see it. The author writes that as a child he showed the drawing to adults, who never saw it as more than a hat. As the story continues, Exupery gives the reader the choice to accept and learn from simplicity and beauty or to label the book as as fairy tale and move on.
But let's talk about sunrises and sunsets.
"First this: God created the Heavens and Earth—all you see, all you don’t see. Earth was a soup of nothingness, a bottomless emptiness, an inky blackness. God’s Spirit brooded like a bird above the watery abyss.
God spoke: “Light!” And light appeared.
God saw that light was good and separated light from dark.
God named the light Day, he named the dark Night."
This is why I chase them. This is why they never grow old. Each sunrise reminds me that God created all things in the beginning and graced this world with luminescence and created the sensory-neural connections in my brain so that my eyes may behold. Call it energy, call it an electromagnetic spectrum, call it a scientific phenomena, it's still a miracle.
And what about sunsets, what story do they tell? Some of them are magnificent and dramatic while others are gentle and quiet. They remind me that seasons come and go, and there is no day so terrible or night so dark that will not see the light again. God alone gives us grace to endure and new eyes to see.
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