When I rise at 4:00 A.M. the world is dark and very cool.  Yesterday was a 90-degree day, yet this morning is only 46-degrees.  I look to the east and study the familiar silhouette of the 30-40 peaks that constitute my view of the Wallowa Mountains.  The sky is clear.  Where and when will the sun make its appearance?

On the 21st of June, the longest day of the year, the sun rose on the right hand slope of China Cap, the second peak from the left.  On this 10th day of August I wait and watch as the sky gets lighter.  A glow begins to appear and grow in the very middle of the mountain range, and the first flash of light happens this morning from the very lowest trough of the range at 5:56.

On June 21st, sunrise was at 5:18.  That's a 38-minute difference spread over 50 days.  That calculates out to a 43-second delay each day from the previous morning's rise of the sun.  If each sunset is also 43 seconds earlier, that means that each day becomes 86 seconds shorter than the previous day, or, in other words, each day is approximately 1 1/2 minutes shorter than the day before.

The sun is 93-million miles away, yet I can instantly feel its warmth.  How is that possible?  How can something that is 93-million miles away affect me at all?  My previously dark and cold world is now light and warming because of that distant object in the sky.  That distant object is so brilliant that I can't even look at it.

God is like that.  He may seem to be far away, yet His influence reaches us instantly.  Like the sun, He can't be looked upon with the natural eyes, either, but he warms and enlightens us.  His influence enfolds us not only throughout the day, but all night, too.  He is the One who put the sun in the sky, and who organized this world to function as it does.  This whole system is a marvel to me.  I'm grateful to be here, grateful to be a part of this, and am grateful for Him who made my life and my blessings and this world possible.