On an evening run at sunset my first thought was to burst into the song, “Sunrise Sunset,” but my second thought was about how incredible this universe is. If there is ever any doubt that God is an artist all one needs to do is look to the heavens. I have had the privilege to see sunsets paint the mountains in every shade of purple and pink and to watch over the vastness of the oceans as the sun grows impossibly large and then falls off the end of the earth. I have seen the sunrise paint the dense green of a forest with its golden hues and bring out the most dazzling colors that can even make a dirt road look beautiful under a canopy of leaves and light. I have looked to the heavens in a place where our light is not allowed to diminish God’s and I been awed by the shear number of the stars above glowing in the immensity of the universe. I have walked through snowy fields bathed in the reflection of the northern lights, the aurora borealis, a splash of every color dancing in the dark cold sky.

My daughter has this thing about making mountains. In the yard she finds dirt or even grass, but today it was sand at the beach. I am not sure where she got the idea, but somehow today I saw it as something more than a child’s game. Today she made mountains for each of the people she loves and then proceeded to dismantle them. it made me think of the mountains that we build for ourselves. On the one hand, we set goals that become our mountains to climb. These are good mountains so long as we are willing to either make the effort reach them and to keep them in sight or if we are willing to set them aside as something we no longer need. I actually think this kind of mountain is critical to avoiding a kind of complacency that leads to a life without goals. Unfortunately i also think there are too many people who are so afraid of not reaching them that they refuse to set goals or who are too afraid to go after what they really want, so the mountain remains something they simply look at from time to time as something beautiful, but too far off to reach. I guess i don’t believe in the unclimbable mountain and for me the joy of life is in both the attempt and the achievements of reaching our own personal summits.