A Summer of Sunsets

Every sunset brings the promise of a new dawn.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I am so very blessed to live where a short drive affords ocean vistas.  There is a reason why they call it the Ocean State!  ;-) 

And along with ocean vistas come great opportunities for magnificent sunsets like these that I captured earlier this summer...

I am also blessed to live in a town that has a beautiful park with the Mt. Hope Bay as it's backdrop - a backdrop that provides spectacular sunsets.   My husband and I try to walk at this park every night in the summer, and we time our walks just right to catch the sunsets.    It never gets old!  My Google photos album is filled with sunset pictures!

Here is a sampling...   :-)  

As I reflected upon my summer of sunsets, sunsets that I looked forward to seeing every day with great anticipation, I thought about another kind of sunset, those sunsets that occur throughout life's seasons...

The sunset of our youth, of having children still at home, of our jobs, of our health and of our lives.  

I think we all can admit that although some sunsets of life may be looked forward to like retirement, most of life's sunsets are not happily anticipated, but bring with them wistfulness.  

When you watch the sun set, it is amazing how quickly it does just that!  My husband and I always say, it's like we can actually see it moving before our eyes!

Sunsets, like childhood, are viewed with wonder 

not just because they are beautiful 

but because they are fleeting.

Richard Paul Evans

And so it is with the sunsets of life, they too are fleeting...  

And with every new dawn, whether it be the dawning of a new day or the dawning of a new season of life, we have hope in this promise of God...

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;

    his mercies never come to an end;

 they are new every morning;

    great is your faithfulness.

Lamentations 3:22-23

What can we learn from these sunset pictures, where some sunsets are intensely bright, others show through volatile looking clouds, others create cloud luminaries, and still others cast beautiful colors upon the waters and sky evoking feelings of peace, is that every sunset has at it's core light and that light becomes more and more intense the lower in the horizon it sinks, resulting in a magnificent display of colors that reaches farther and farther out from its center.

What if we viewed life's sunsets as opportunities for the Light of Christ to become more and more intense, allowing Christ to be seen through us in a magnificent display of contentment and peace that reaches to all we come in contact with.

From the rising of the sun to its setting 

The name of the LORD is to be praised.

Psalm 113:3

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Sunsets are so beautiful that they almost seem as if 

we were looking through the gates of Heaven.

John Lubbock

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