I used to chase sunsets. Sunsets are one of the most incredible sights in the world to me. I waited for beautiful moments to come so I could take a picture of it and show it to all my friends.
Sunsets are beautiful but fleeting to our human eye. Only a small percentage of the Earth can see a sunset at one time. The sun takes its turn around the world, casting fiery colors as it passes, allowing each and every pocket of the world to appreciate its beauty, but only for a small moment at a time. I recently discovered that every human being is a sunset.
God has put each of us in a time and place. He has carried us over the vast expanse of this green and blue Earth and has let different pockets of the world experience our fiery colors and ray of passion and depth. We have chased after physical beauty. We search for the aesthetically pleasing. Each and every one of us is a stunning and unique human being. I doubt the red in a sunset thinks it’s any bigger of a deal than the orange. We are altogether beautiful.
My good friend Margaret once wrote, “We all have a few seemingly unattainable perfect moments that come to mind automatically, but these moments are not reality. My whole life I’ve been waiting for God to hand me perfect moments, and I would get so mad if little, inconsequential things went wrong. I was rarely satisfied, so I was on constant search of beautiful sunsets, mountain landscapes and waterfalls, then I would add them to my collection of beautiful moments. There are going to be so few times in my life where beautiful moments are handed to me on a silver platter. If, while waiting for them, I lose myself in my dissatisfaction, I’ll never be happy. I would live an unsatisfying life; I would just be surviving. But if I choose a happy attitude amidst the grim, then I’ll actually be living. My prayer is that I can learn to choose joy in the hardest of moments.”
Though beauty on the outward is a definite desire for most, I would argue, but it is fleeting. Human beauty comes in and out as we pass through our life and time. People see it when you’re in their pocket. Then, you leave a new stage in life and new people see it and so on. Those new people see a different aspect of beauty that the old people were too young to notice. Much like a sunset. The pink sliver I see in my Tucson sky at night may be a red burst by the time it is a sunset in Virginia, an orange flame in Jordan or a yellow trickle by Australia. I want to have eyes to see the pink sliver of a beautiful you.
The beautiful thing is that this world is so much more than just you or just me. We are a reflection of God’s love, and the very beauty that Jesus sought in people is in us as well. You are beautiful because He is beautiful. You are lovely because He is lovely. You are wanted because He is wanted. You cannot hope to love others until you love yourself. And you cannot love yourself until you love the One who creates you. Yes, he created you, but as we already established, He ain’t finished yet.
Every day, the sunset is different. It never comes around the same way twice. I saw the beautiful sunsets in my college friends. Their childhood friends saw a different beautiful sunset in them while growing up. Their future friends will see yet another unique sunset than I saw in each of them but they remain altogether beautiful. No matter the roadblocks, you are a beautiful sunset in all the other phases of your life. Jesus did that.
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Life is beautiful if you let it be beautiful. Sometimes I get frustrated with the cactus in my backyard because it blocks the view of the beautiful Tucson sunset (really the one aesthetic thing our city has going for it). The cactus to me is one of the ugliest things God created (sorry to all the true Arizona fans out there; the desert sucks.) I want a perfect view, an untainted image to hold onto with the ugly cactus in the way of the gorgeous fire sky. But the silhouettes of the cactus give the image dimension. They make the sunset real. The cacti bring the sunset down to me and place me in it, rather than just being a watercolor painting in the sky from Jesus’ hands himself. The thing about beauty is that you have to keep your eyes open to see it. You have to take the initiative to look for the beauty you are sitting in, rather than waiting for nightfall.
As Margaret said, we have to choose joy, even in the hardest and ugliest of moments. We have to see past the grim and grotesque things in our world. We have to see the bucket as being as beautiful as the silver platter. Life and what this world has to offer is worthy of so much more than your Instagram feed. You have to watch for the small things and learn to appreciate them for what they are, not just wallow in the Instagram-worthy. You have to learn to believe yourself to be a beautiful thing and the world a beautiful place.
