Nothing to See

I went for a run at Esquimalt Lagoon, and I've been going there pretty often lately. Apart from some traffic and the obvious looming development, it's a breathtaking spot. Roughly to the east, you can see the Victoria lights dance and shimmer along the Juan de Fuca Strait. South is Washington and the wildly rugged Olympics. To the west, the setting sun. I love to come here on my way home from the office and try to time it so that I finish my run for the sunset. There is a great high spot nearby. Though it looks over a rock quarry's scraped landscape, the sun descends over distant, wooded rolling hills. This resting sun envelops the Olympics with pinks and reds. Most impressive are the partly cloudy nights. As the light from the sun passes through and around the shapes and forms of these cotton clusters, a spectacular abstract water color is displayed in the sky.

As I finished this most recent run, I grabbed my camera and tripod to catch this night's picture show. While walking to my overlook (Ok, it's not mine), I passed an older couple. Seeing my gear, one said with a smile, "Looks like someone is going to take some pictures." The other added, "You're not going to get much of a picture tonight. There are too many clouds, it's too late, and the sun is basically down."

"We'll see about that," I thought.

In part, they were right. For many, it would not have been a spectacular sunset. Yet, it was still another sky-show not worth missing. Muted, more subtle and harder to see, the colors were still there.

This couple's response reminded me of the many times I assume and subsequently avoid something. Something that could have been profound and beautiful. All it takes in life to experience beauty and something new is openness and expectation. I guess you could call that hope. Not hope in something specific. That's expectation, and expectation can disappoint. Yet, hope is stepping into life's ups, downs, and run-of-the-mills assuming that something of beauty will be found. We make no qualification, but hope with eyes wide open. And there is God all along.

"So, we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal."