Tip of My Iceberg

With me living in Orlando and my two sisters living in Tucson, we’ve been having the ongoing discussion/whine fest about our local heat.

The heat in much of the world–and I know for a fact the southern part of the US–has been uncomfortably high. There’s been suffering because of it, especially in places where they have no ability to cool their surroundings.

When we whine about the weather, it’s definitely a first world problem.

What my sisters pointed out was the uniqueness of Tucson, Arizona’s environment that gives the sky the most incredibly beautiful sunsets I’ve ever seen.

This picture was taken right after a microburst, an intense torrent of rain during what the locals term “monsoon”, the one time of year they get a significant amount of moisture.

The clouds and colors were incredible.

What it made me think of, however, was the song from “Fiddler on the Roof” entitled “Sunrise, Sunset”. A stage musical created in 1964, it became a movie musical in 1971. It’s based on a series of stories by Sholem Aleichem about Jewish life in a village in Russia at the turn of the twentieth century.

The lyrics for this song reflect the passage of time that is swift and unnoticed until a major life experience alerts us to the reality that time passes rapidly with no ability to slow or stop it.

Tevye has three daughters; two of them marry men he approves of, but the third marries a Russian whom he dislikes. He realizes he has no ability to force her to follow his wishes, and it causes a rift between the two of them.

Time can cause separations between people that aren’t anticipated. It’s the continuous cycle of sunrise, sunset–days pass without us paying attention, often just waiting for one day to end because it’s tedious or hard. If we’re not deliberate about who we’re with and what we do, it’s our loss.

We’re only here for a brief amount of time. Death too often surprises us; losing those we love makes us wish we’d been more intentional with how we spend our time.

God has a wholistic perspective of life; He’s outside of space and time and knows all things. He knows our beginning and end; we don’t. It should cause us to value each day, choosing to live it the best way we can.

“For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven….Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of god’s work from beginning to end.” Ecclesiastes 3:1, 11

We all go through seasons as we live. Times of growth, hope, purpose, and intention. And loss and disappointment.

Tevye understood the value of time. He sang:

Sunrise, sunset, swiftly fly the years. One season following another, laden with happiness and tears.”

A magnificent sunrise or sunset causes us to pause, to really look and perhaps see what we so easily miss. We too often overlook that which feels familiar and old. It’s just another sunset.

But God has made us for eternity. We get to choose where we will spend that unlimited space.

Let’s not ignore the passing seasons of our lives.

Nobody wants the sun to set on their hope.