What do you see?

What do you notice in this photo? Take a moment to have a look. Is it the industrial buildings? The parked cars? The train at the station? The fading sun?

This is the view from the back of my flat, and is one of the many, many photos I've taken hanging out the bathroom window. All of sunsets. This one was stunning - but as usual, it failed to translate into the photo. And it struck me that life is a bit like that…

What do we notice as we go through our day? Dreary skies and dismal rain? Impatient drivers and irritable pedestrians? Tasteless food and turgid work? Or maybe the opposite. Cheerful sunshine, supportive friends, delicious meals?

But what do we see when we really look? When we view our world and lives with biblical eyes? That's when we see the truth – that God, in all his awesome goodness, truly is the Lord of all.

Every night for twenty years, the Lord has shown me a different sunset from my bathroom window. When I photograph them, they fade into the background of the "real world". But when I gaze at them, it's everything else that fades from sight. Because what I'm seeing is what's really true. The Lord who delights in shaping that sunset differently every single time, is the Lord Almighty. His is the real kingdom. The everlasting kingdom. That's the truth the sky points us to.

"The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the end of the world. In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun. It is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, like a champion rejoicing to run his course. It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other; nothing is deprived of its warmth." Psalm 19 v 1-6