That Ancient Ceremony

All it took was a sentence in my book about the transition in the sky when night turned to day and my imagination was wild.  I suddenly wanted those early moments, before sunrise even, when the night sky begins to blush ever so slightly behind the stars. Shadows move, things awake, everything preparing for the grand entrance of the sun.

We all see the veil drop in the evening, but few see it lifted up.  Those fleeting moments as the day is revealed and opened, presented even, in it's brand new never-been-lived-before newness.  I wanted to be there watching.  

And that was the secret I had tucked away so long ago and was only just now remembering.  My "wake up early" secret was to get outside and just be there, to watch and see. Just for five minutes.  Maybe with a camera.  Whatever it took to suck in a few of those sharp, cold breaths of early air, to hear the crunch of the leaves underfoot, to make me feel awake.  It totally destroyed my desire to be asleep, to just go back to bed.  

So this morning I escaped.  I snuck outside while the others slept, so careful not to make a sound.

And there it was: the blush.  The night stars and sunrise passing hands.  Changing of the celestial guard.  Ancient ceremony witnessed always by the Ancient One who spoke it all into being. It is somehow so captivating when I really consider how long this has been going on.  The stars bowing out and the sun entering, rising grandly, everything like clockwork. How many days have come and gone like this, without fail and in perfect time?

And all of this because we sit on these giant globes moving through space, spinning, passing one another, orbiting in and out of shadows.  Magnificence on the smallest scale from where I sit, the cheap seats, really, to magnificence on the grandest scale.  That living, moving procession of beauty and wonder out there, beyond, too big for our eyes to even take in.  Beauty expanding, space stretching, and we can't keep up. We can't even fathom something so measureless. 

And all of this because he chose to create.  Because he could and he wanted to.  Because he sat in the darkness of the expanse and hovered over the waters and said "Let there be light." 

And there was light.

Oh, that voice! The one that birthed galaxies and even a Savior in a stable, and speaks things into birth now, saying "Turn and live."  He speaks into my darkest waters, hovers there, fills my emptiest expanse, and says again and always, "Let there be light."

And there is light.