What is already there

Yesterday morning, I headed out early in the barely lit day to drive to the refugee clinic.  I was the lone car on this stretch of road, and it was like walking through a dark house with a tiny nightlight to guide my way.  Morning was coming.  It just wasn't quite here yet.

As I came down the big hill and around the bend of the winding pavement, over the swollen river towards the open fields, I traveled cautiously with my eye out for deer crossing the road.  But I was instead startled by a radiance slicing through the thick greyness of the horizon, even through what promised to be yet another dull sky.

That which came up from under the commonplace was a brilliant sunrise, as if to announce in every possible language that this is not just another day. There is no ordinary sunrise.  There are no ordinary days without the sacredness of the divine.  The breaking of the dawn continues even behind leaden skies, embedded in the order of things we trust without even thinking about it, a wonder ignored in the routines of the morning... or sleeping through the extraordinary. 

His glory casts the unexplainable all over its onset.  His faithfulness appears in every moment.  If I seek it or not, if I even see it or not, God is already there in our midst.  I am awed by the spectacular.  I should equally be beyond words for this day, even if I miss the light show at dawn, even if it rains yet another day.  It was on the cloudy days, He guided His people through the great wilderness.

I pulled over to the side of the road to take a picture, to grasp the evidence by my phone, to remember, to share.  But the tiny momentary image could not measure what I saw, neither words to describe it.

The Mighty One, God the LORD,
speaks and summons the earth
from the rising of the sun to its setting.
Out of Zion,
        the perfection of beauty,
God shines forth.

                           Psalm 50. 1-2

My day was changed by what I saw,
my heart transfixed by His glory in it.