A couple months ago I was cross country skiing on a ridge near Tumalo Creek and saw one of the most amazing sunsets painted next to a silouette of Broken Top, it literally made me gasp. Last week I got to play soccer in a farmer's field while flashes of lightning set off gunshots of thunder underneath enormous black rain clouds while the sun tried it's best to break through but could only manage to outline the clouds with whimisical blues and pinks. A couple days before I slept under a huge sky of stars in the dry and desolate Oregon Badlands. One of the things I most love in life is visiting new places where the beauty and majesty of God's creation abounds.
However, it's sad, beauty is so fleeting just as this life is. You can try to capture it in a photo, but we'll never be able to see what really was. A picture cannot bring out the smell of juniper and sagebrush and all the smells that remain after a spring thunderstorm. Nothing can ever bring those moments back. There's a reason they're called moments.
When I think about this I realize that beauty is pointless, it really is. Solomon, the wisest man in the world wrote a book that's in the bible called Ecclesiastes. In it he talks about trying to find pleasure in wealth (which he had - more than any man), fame, buildings, gardens, and women but in the end he said that it was all meaningless. There is no way we can find complete satisfaction in the things of this world. Like Solomon realized, we also must realize this:
Now all has been heard;
here is the conclusion of the matter:
Fear God and keep his commandments,
for this is the whole duty of man.
- Ecclesiastes 12:13
We are to fear God. Fear doesn't mean we need to be afraid, it means we need to be in awe of Him because He is all powerful, eternal, he holds our lives in His hands. But he has also given us a way to share in eternity, to be able to live in beauty that won't end.
"For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." - Romans 6:23
"That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." - Romans 10:9
It's that simple. Heaven awaits...
