The sunset was absolutely spectacular.  The Lord God certainly paints beautiful colours in the sky.  Lots of other folk thought it was a glorious spectacle too.  How did I know that?  Well, on our usual evening walk along the breakwater of Coffs Harbour, every man and his dog was taking photos of the sunset.  Okay, I exaggerate.  The dogs were merely waiting patiently for their humans to get off their phone-cameras and back to the business of walking.  Later I noticed it wasn’t only here on the East Coast of Oz that we had a great sunset.  An acquaintance of mine who is touring around the country posted a glorious sunset picture from the west coast in the Kimberley’s.

Social media fans will have noticed more lovely sunset shots than usual in recent days.  Scientists tell us that this is the afterglow of the recent volcanic eruption in Tonga.  Apparently volcanoes spew sulphate aerosols into the stratosphere that add obstacles for the light.  This means that when the sun sinks to the horizon and there’s more of the atmosphere for the sun’s rays to penetrate then only the light waves at the red end of the spectrum get through.

It puzzles me that anyone can admire a sunset and still maintain that everything happened randomly and by chance.  Really...?  The fact that white light breaks up into a spectrum of rainbow colours is in itself enough to make me stand in awe of a creator God and to thank Him for creating beauty for me to enjoy.  To me it seems absurd to say that light just happened and that all by itself light broke up into various wave lengths thus making sunsets after a volcanic eruption redder than usual.  I can’t help but wonder.  I witness a majestic sunset and I’m filled with thanks to the Creator God who made me.  But who does the atheist thank for a gorgeous sunset?  Well, I heard one atheist state that he thanks the universe for things like that.  But, hey, that’s cheating.  That’s ascribing personality and divinity and power to an inanimate something.

But there’s another matter that’s worth thinking about.  These wonderful sunsets should remind us that our God can turn tragedy into glory.  The eruption of the volcano in Tonga was not exactly a welcome phenomenon.  There were people who died in that eruption.  There was a lot of damage done in Tonga and neighbouring islands.  Infrastructure was ruined.  People’s livelihoods were seriously impacted.  A volcanic eruption is not exactly welcomed just so that people can enjoy spectacular sunsets.  And yet...!  God can bring beauty out of terror.  It made me think of a saying I sometimes heard from my mother: God often uses a crooked stick to hit a straight stroke.

That’s a principle that we can take from a sunset and apply to humans in everyday life.  At present I’m reading a booklet by Nick Hawkes.  It’s called ‘Soar Above The Storm’.  He tells how he has been battling cancer for the last five years.  He has cancer throughout his body and these last five years have been a blur of hospitals, clinics and treatment.  But Nick Hawkes makes this telling comment: “The last five years... have been the most joyful, peaceful, miraculous and productive of my life.  That’s the difference God makes.”

That’s worth thinking about.  Beautiful sunsets such as those we have seen recently are only possible when there has been the destructive terror of a volcanic eruption.  Is it too much to expect that in human life we won’t see much beauty unless there has been suffering?  The Bible seems to point us in that direction.  The apostle James tells us to count it all joy when we meet various kinds of trials.  And just as we’re about to tell James to go and take a hike he adds that through those trials we will grow and mature and become perfect.  The apostle Paul said something similar in Romans chapter 5.  He says that we rejoice in our sufferings knowing that suffering produces endurance and that endurance builds character.  It’s a distinctly Christian theme that glory comes through suffering – and there is a sense in which our beautiful sunsets remind us of this principle.

In fact that’s the heartbeat of the good news about Jesus.  He humbled himself to the point of death, death on a cruel cross, so that He would be exalted to be Lord of lords and King of kings.

John Westendorp