[Faith-talk] Daily Thought for Friday, August 1, 2014

[Paul]

Hello to all of you on this Friday or, for you in Australia and New Zealand as this is being written, already a Saturday morning.  I hope that your day is going well, whether that time of day be morning, afternoon or evening.

This article will be especially of interest to Aussies, but I hope that the rest of you will get a blessing from reading it.  Again it was posted last year at about this time, but many have not read it previously, so for those especially and the rest of you here it is once again.  The contribution in question was written by Jean Grant, an author living in California, and the title of her piece is "Did You Miss Something?", rendered as follows:

All eyes were on Ayers Rock, the spectacle we had gathered from all over the world to see at sunset.  There were a thousand or more of us, crowded beside our tour buses and rental cars.  Hushed.  Waiting.

The monolith rose solitary on the barren red desert of the Australian Outback.  A few scrubby shrubs managed to survive on the rare and unreliable rainfall.  The heat was oppressive, well over 100 degrees even as the day slowly drew to a close.

Pools lingered, hidden within the lower folds of the rock, long after rainwater had vanished from the rest of the desert.  A myriad of creatures--blue tongued lizards, flightless emus, and an occasional dingo--might find shelter in the weathered coves near the base of the monument.

Uluru, the Aborigines call it.  A sacred place, like no other on earth.  We watched, waiting for the promised spectacle.

We were not disappointed.  As the sun sank behind us, the rock began to glow.  Burnt orange turned to scarlet.  Vermillion, claret and cherry touched the shadows.  Moment by moment, the awesome vision changed, as carmine, crimson and ruby played one color against the other on the table-topped mountain.

No one saw anything else; what more could we hope for? But for some reason, I turned around.  Only then did I discover that an even grander canvas had been painted on the sky behind the crowd!

Was it a reminder that God's majesty always exceeds our meager expectations? God's grace is not limited by our capacity to hope; God's beauty isn't one dimensional.  We're surrounded by God's glory.  All we have to do is look.

And there you have Jean's article which I trust was a blessing for you.  Maybe some of you sighted readers have seen Ayers Rock/Uluru in National Geographic or some other magazine.  If so, you can appreciate what Jean wrote.

And now may the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob just keep us safe, individually and collectively, in these last days in which we live.  Lord willing, tomorrow there will be another Daily Thought message and article for you.  Your Christian friend and brother, Paul