Zapata Falls near Great Sand Dunes National Park, Colorado
I’m convinced that one of the reasons people love to watch the sunset is because they enjoy watching the changes that come over the landscape in the shift from day to night. The air stills or the wind picks up. Colorful buttes and mesas take on a silhouette-quality. Noises become louder than before. It’s a new and very different world when the sun goes down.
Arizona sunset near Mount Trumbull
Being in the darkness puts a new perspective on how we see the world. For one thing, we can’t see as well, so we begin to rely on other senses. As we turn to hearing, which is not at all impaired by the dark, sounds become louder. Smells become stronger as we rely on that sense to tell us how close to a mesquite bush we are. We shuffle our feet so we don’t trip over an unseen object. We even use “sixth senses” – I used to walk through dark rooms trying to sense when I was about to collide with a piece of furniture (with mixed results).
Looking up in the Big Crack, Lava Beds National Monument, California
The world seems smaller in the darkness because we can only see, hear, and sense our immediate surroundings. So our world is suddenly more intimate. It is either comforting or terrifying depending on how much we feel we need to know more than the small circle that has become our world.
Sunset at Old Faithful, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming
Even light looks different in the darkness. One of my vans had the worst headlights I think I’ve ever seen on a street-legal vehicle – I could drive down the highway with the high beams on, and I’m sure people still wondered why my lights were so dim. In the daytime, the lights were useless. But at night, they could be blinding.
Exploring in Lava Beds National Monument, California
Sometimes in our lives, we feel like we are walking through dark places. We can’t see where we are going; we can’t see much of anything other than what we sense in the immediate vicinity. It can be a scary place to be.
Wildfires along I-15 somewhere south of Salt Lake City, Utah
But God is with us – as we talked about last week, God has already been through this slot canyon before us. And it’s in these dark places that we begin to see things in a different light. Because while the situations around us may not have changed, everything looks different in the darkness. And that perspective may be a very valuable perspective to see.
Sunset at the Lincoln Rest Area, Wyoming
“Even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you… The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” (Psalm 139:12; John 1:5)
