Perfect Light

There are times, post-rain, near sunset, when the sun casts a magical light and transforms everything in its path with unfathomable beauty. 

That particular shade of light, it's unreal...surreal...ethereal... It makes every common thing look grand and pure and heavenly.  It makes every common thing jaw-droppingly, mind-blowingly beautiful.  Seriously. 

Tonight, I couldn't stop gazing at simple stalks of corn, they appeared so rapturous and transcendent, reflecting the beauty so perfectly that it seemed they became that beauty.  And the beauty of the perfect light perfected every good aspect those stalks possessed and more than covered over every insufficiency.  I was staring at stalks of corn, and I felt that my human body in all its capacities was not sufficient to fully process this unearthly beauty.

As I was soaking it all in, full of wonder, unable to fully comprehend what my eyes were seeing, it struck me--the same God who makes the sun cast this perfect light is the same God who has given us His Son, the most perfect light.  And isn't that what He does?  He takes ordinary, common, flawed people, shines His perfect light on them, and transforms them to become grand, pure, rapturous, transcendent, jaw-droppingly, mind-blowingly beautiful.  The kind of beauty that mystifies and entrances all who gaze on it, because it is so...perfect. 

If you look closely, you can see a double rainbow!

Tonight, our amazing Creator and loving Father awed me with new understanding of Jesus' own words: "I am the Light of the world...Be perfect as I am perfect..." (John 8:12, Matt. 5:48).  Of course, it makes perfect sense: we become perfect not by toiling legalistically to do all the right spiritual things, but by letting He who is perfect reflect through us and perfect us.  I've known that in my mind, but now it seems so beautifully clear...

A Day in the Life

This afternoon the kids and I played sidekick to Owen on his survey project at Tall Safut.  He was walking around the site taking GPS points, from which he will reconstruct the top plans and etcetera...Safita helped him with this task, and was a fantastic assistant. 

Jack wandered around making stone pizzas and dirt soup in any spare bottle cap he could find.  I was in charge of the glorious (but important) job of cleaning weeds off the tops of excavated walls for pictures that will be taken in the next few days.  Unfortunately, I didn't accomplish very much due to frequent requests to taste the aforementioned pizza and soup, amidst tending to other needs of the small ones.  They really did splendidly, though; we were quite impressed with them.  Safita, adorably, was practically giddy over daddy. 

The sunset and dusk from atop Safut were amazingly spectacular!  The site overlooks the Bekaa Valley, so we watched the villages of the valley slowly sparkle to life while the sky burned beautiful deep tones of red, orange, to deep pink, to heathery purple.  At one point, we were serenaded by a surround-sound of the call to prayer, broadcast from numerous minarets all around the site and down through the valley.  It was kind of majestic, with sunset, and the wind, and the twinkling lights, and the echo of the valley.  Jack got excited about the "scary green prayer" and had fun counting all the minarets he could spot.  There were at least 10 in close proximity, and countless more throughout the valley.  Sadly, we forgot our good camera and only had the point-and-shoot, so the pictures just don't do it justice. 

The young man who farms the plot of land at the foot of the tell came up after a while to keep us company, and before we left brought us a bounty of his crop--I'm not sure what the name of it is, but it's some sort of cross between cucumber, zucchini, and summer squash.  It's tasty.  We ate it with our falafel dinner, which Jack requested on the way home.  (We're so proud when our 2-year-old son requests falafel or shawerma for dinner!  He also loved the cucumber/zucchini thingies and ate them heartily.)