The Ordinary is Extraordinary!

Mary Ann working on her cast.

Last Sunday our family left for our "weekend" and slipped up to the Sierra Nevada Mountains after church for some fellowship and fishing. We love what happens in our hearts above 5,000 feet when the rivers are flowing with clear, cold water and the breeze blows through the tall trees that cover the rock covered mountains. Bethany caught a trout while we were there, Abigail became an amazing "caster," and Mary Ann and I got to practice fly fishing. There is something so beautiful about that line curling up in the air above and behind a person as they gently drop the fly into the stream or pool. The new header for this blog is a picture of our family from our trip (if you are reading this by email subscription you'll need to go to the blog to see it). It was wonderful, refreshing, and beautiful—and the fact that we shared the couple of days with some wonderful people up there who love the Lord and our family made it especially sweet.

On the way home Tuesday night we headed straight west for awhile, right into a sunset. The sun was slipping down behind the far hills and there must have been a haze or something out there because it was a big, orange ball that you could actually look at. I have seen hundreds of sunsets in my life, and there was nothing in and of itself spectacular about this one, but for some reason it really struck Mary Ann and I at the same time. Maybe it is because this last year or two God has been awakening me to the awe and wonder of His Creation in the heavens and I have been learning a lot, and sharing a lot, about them. Normally, during the day, you can't look at the sun. It is this ball of light in the corner of our eye that we take for granted. It is normal. But Tuesday night we couldn't not stare at it as it was straight in front of us right on the horizon. To take our eyes off it would be to take them off the road. As we stared at it we both were like, "That is a star!"

I don't know that this will make much sense, but there is a sense, at least for me, that I see all these stars out there at night, and then during the day there is our sun. Maybe it is because I equate stars with night, but it often eludes my conscious thought that the sun is a star. I know it intellectually, but fail to focus on that fact. It is just "the sun" in the sky, and it is "normal." Tuesday night, however, we both found ourselves in awe, realizing we were staring at a star—a great big, massive, ball of gas and fire that would consume us long before we ever got to it! We were staring at a star and it was big and it was close! It was astounding. It was awe inspiring. There is this star just a skip away in light year terms that we are circling around. We are feeling its heat. Its blazing light is lighting up our earth. It is so big and so powerful that nothing man has ever created is a fraction of its power. According to one web site, if we could harness it right, enough energy arrives at our earth every minute to meet all of our demands for a year—and that is with only about a hundredth of a millionth of a percent of the sun's energy actually hitting our earth! It is so mighty, and yet we (at least I) take it for granted and take our proximity to it for granted. I am afraid that in this, and in many things, I have let the extraordinary become ordinary.