I met another what-adjective-do-I-use-now sunrise.
Spectacular, stunning, fabulous, amazing, pretty, awe-inspiring — they all fit while at the same time falling short of conveying exactly what I witnessed.
So I hauled out my cheap-o, vintage cellphone and took a post-it-to-Facebook shot…and waxed somewhat poetic in my message:
And to think it’s an event constantly oozing around the planet!”
That was on December 24 (2011) at 7:24 (in the morning, right?).
Still enthralled with the poetic poetickness, I posted to Twitter eleven minutes later:
I also used my regular-but-also-now-vintage camera to try to capture some of the imagery. Here’s one of the results:
sunrise lava oozes ever westward
Not only was I impressed by the immediate beauty and divine handiwork (using light and dust particles and other atmospheric “garbage”), I was also struck by the fact that the sunrise didn’t end when I quit seeing it.
What I mean is, the sunrise marches faithfully in its global east-to-west circuit, flowing in a never ending stream of spectacular art. And practical art, relentlessly driving away the dark.
Yup. Relentlessly, steadily, predictably oozing on and on and on in one giant cycle.
I use the word oozing. That sounds slow to me. And yet, how fast is a sunrise (and its pursuing/pushing sunset)? I suppose the answer is the circumference of the globe divided by the day’s hours.
If we were at the equator… Hmmm… Lemme look it up on Wikipedia… OK, so we have 24,901.460897 miles divided by 24 hours… It seems the speed of the sunrise is roughly 1,038 miles per hour at the equator.
I don’t know its speed here near the 45th parallel (45°10’56″N). Would it be twice that? Half? Closer to half than to twice, I’m sure.
Anyway, some day the beautiful, speeding, “never ending” sunrise ooze will end. The Bible tells me so:
“But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up” (2 Peter 3:10).
What of it?
“Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness” (2 Peter 3:11).
What manner of person ought I to be. Indeed.
A good reminder to live by.
And this time, God reminded me via a sunrise.
Which makes it a repeatable reminder.
If I’ll notice.