I love that moment of sunrise. Everything changes. The last few wispy clouds of night are suddenly painted gold and are broken with brilliant rays of yellow sunshine. Wood pigeons coo and other birds burst into song, just happy to be alive to sing through another day, I guess. The night is over and hope is in the air.
Sammy told me yesterday that the last thing in Pandora's Box was hope, according to Greek mythology. It's profound to think that buried under all the evils in the world was this tiny sense of hope, an expectation that things can be better, that evil can be overcome, even when we are responsible for letting it loose. When all else is lost, hope is alive.
It's a beautiful reflection of the hope we carry through the darkest moments of our own lives, especially as believers. I'm not saying that I believe Greek mythology; I just think that there's a lot to learn from some of the things the ancients saw in Creation, in human nature and in our undeniable need for something greater.
Yesterday was good by the way. I played some duff notes (and a few nicer ones) and the teaching was so good it feels like an injustice to try to sum it up. I realised that I need to be much more specific in some of the things I'm praying about at the moment, and much less focused on the things I'm negative about. I also realised that it's probably a mistake to leave your coat on stage behind the visiting speaker and then sit right by the door of the marquee when you're in your shirt sleeves.
Our undeniable need for something greater. Hope looks forwards, searching the future for something greater to pull backwards into the present. It's the place where the thing we long for overlaps into the situation we're in and floods it with sunshine. It's that brightening sky and the first whispers of morning in the longest and darkest of nights. It's Heaven On Planet Earth.
Well that's what I think, anyway. Then, I'm sitting in a cold, wet field, watching the sun come up. And my feet are freezing.
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