Watching A Sunrise
This morning, I did something I should have begun doing ages ago. I climbed up on the roof to watch the sunrise.
(It was cold. My toes are still numb.)
It was beautiful. The sun lit up in a peachy, tealish pink way that was just so clean and peaceful. The clouds ranged in colour from a dark purple to a light pink, that sharply contrasted with everything that the shimmering sun touched.
In the quiet of the morning, before the craziness that I know today will have, I felt something I haven’t really felt in a long time. Peace.
I don’t know about you all, but when life gets crazy, I don’t slow down. Maybe physically I do, (I do sleep sometimes…) But I don’t mentally--mainly because I don’t have an off switch. I just keep letting my thoughts keep going and hope that eventually they’ll slow down and I’ll be able to go back to being normal.
Slowing down in this insane world is hard.
Having devotion, and communion with God when your brain isn’t scrambling to do nine hundred other things at the same time is hard!
I don’t necessarily do slowing down.
But, sitting on the roof at 5:00am, with my toes slowly going numb, the sun rising up in the distance, and the smell of a new day filling the air, it was peaceful. I wish that I could have more words to describe that feeling, but unfortunately I don’t, so peace will have to do.
Something that I often say is that God is sovereign and that he has a plan. It’s hard to believe. It’s hard to trust that he knows what he’s doing and that he has a forever plan for me and my life.
You see, when I slowed down long enough to listen to his Holy voice, I heard him say something.
“This isn’t the end.”
Late that night, I had gotten a text from my chummy saying “It has finally sunk in that you’re leaving me Rach.” The night before I had a tear fest with my sister because it was my ‘last’ church barbecue.
I don't know about you, but I despise with vehemence saying goodbyes, and realizing this is the ‘last’ anything.
This isn’t the end. This is a beginning!
Just like the night has to end before the sun comes up and shines in all its radiance, sometimes things need to end.
But just like when every night ends, a new sunrise takes place. A bright and shining sunrise full of colour and feeling.
This feels like an ending. But we have to keep hoping and praying that this is a beginning. This is the beginning of something new and exciting. This is the darkest part of the night before the sun comes up again.
Leaving, and saying those horrid goodbyes hurts. There aren't even words to describe how badly this hurts. But God will be sovereign through all of this.
He’s going to be the King of Glory even through the darkest night. His hope and light will shine even when it hurts.
“This is my prayer for you: that your love will grow more and more; that you will have knowledge and understanding with your love; that you will see the difference between good and bad and will choose the good; that you will be pure and without wrong for the coming of Christ; that you will be filled with the good things produced in your life by Christ to bring glory and praise to God.”
~Philippians 1:9-11
~Rachel Joy