The Ordinary

For a long time now I have felt numb. Numb to saying goodbye to people and places. Numb to recognizing beauty and uniqueness.

Though as I sit quietly on the shores of the Agean Sea, I am utterly amazed by the beauty God has placed in even the simplest of things. 

A sunset. It happens every day, and yet we often miss it. We seek instead, satisfaction in the new, the untouched, the latest news, the newly released album, finding that once we get those things, we are simply eager for more. We go on seeking to find something unusual and unique to satisfy us, living as if the everyday gifts like a sunset are not enough; as if they are "ordinary."

Ordinary?! That we would choose to believe that a flaming sphere that warms the earth and provokes the seasons and gives us light and causes plants to grow and keeps us alive and rises each morning and sets each night is ordinary? Our perspective must be changed. 

In the past week I've wandered through ancient Ephesus, tracked up hillsides of long-forgotten ruins, explored where Paul the Apostle once walked 2000 years ago, walked the streets of famous Antalya, stayed at a 5 star hotel, been offered nine different kinds of Turkish baklava at one meal, walked on the beaches and eaten the foods of the Mediterranean, been around a hundred kids who grew up abroad like me, seen best friends from my past, watched my beloved sister get engaged, flown five times in ten days...

Yet, I continued to be numb to the significant beauty of it all until I took a few minutes to watch the sun go down one day. It caught my glance. It captivated me. It showed me that if there is awe-inspiring beauty in the simplest of things, there must be beauty in the seemingly bigger things too. 

If something we see each evening is that amazing and can impact us so much, how much greater is the beauty that God desires for us to partake with him each day?

All the while this past week, the sun set each evening and rose again each morn. How did I manage to let it slip by unseen? I know nothing but this: through my many imperfections, God has shown me grace. 

As the sun sets and I see Your face,

May I remember Your intimate grace,

You washed my feet, You formed my hands,

You made me a part of Your great plans.

Though I choose to see the earth as plain,

As uninteresting, unsatisfactory, known, the same,

Though I am numb to your great design,

And see this world and its ways as mine,

You warm my heart and make it new,

And in my failures, I turn back to you.  

You rub my numbness. You help me heal,

And pinch by pinch, teach me to feel. 

Though many sunsets pass me unseen,

I doubt not Your grace and love for me. 

For You take my "simple", my "ordinary",

And in one moment, make it extraordinary.