Transition Times

 

After a long day, I walked toward the west as the day died away. It was an odd sunset for the area in which I live. Usually there are explosions of vivid reds and oranges streaking across the sky. Today, the beauty was more subtle. There was just the slightest brush of soft pink beneath the cloud. It was so peaceful and so calm. It was a beautiful way to begin the night.

The prophet Amos writes, “He who made the Pleiades and Orion, and turns deep darkness into the morning and darkens the day into night, who calls for the waters of the sea and pours them out on the surface of the earth, the Lord is his name.”

There is something about the transitions from day to night and night to day that speak to us in a deep and powerful way. How many paintings have been created in an attempt to capture the beauty of a sunrise? How many poems have been penned in an attempt to describe a sunset? How many hearts have been touched by the sight of the vastness of the universe in that moment between day and night?

It is no wonder that these transition times seem to call to us, to speak to our hearts and souls. Perhaps it is the acknowledgement of the gift of another day. Perhaps it is the recognition that another day has passed from our life. Perhaps it is the unconscious knowing that such moments remind us that the earth still turns and that life still goes on. And that, my friends, is a gift.

Peace.