Morning Devotional
September  8, 2005
"The God of the Sunset"      
    by Don Emmitte

In the beginning the Word already existed. He was with God, and he was God. He was in the beginning with God. He created everything there is. Nothing exists that he didn't make. Life itself was in him, and this life gives light to everyone. The light shines through the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it. (John 1:1-5 NLT).

 

Some years ago I remember singing a little chorus at youth camp. It went something like this:

 

Have you ever looked at the sunset with the sky mellowing red?

And the clouds suspended like feathers?

Then I say: you’ve seen Jesus my Lord.

 

I get the advantage of watching the sunset virtually every evening. They have been especially spectacular lately. There is so much to be gleaned from merely watching the sun as it makes its way into the western horizon.

 

I suppose I could be criticized for using the chorus at the beginning of today’s devotional. There may be some who would say that I am being somewhat pantheistic, or that I espouse the concept that God is in everything. To some degree that is true. However, that’s not my focus today. My meaning is that God is in the sunset to the extent that Vincent Van Gogh is in “Starry Night,” his most well known painting. “Starry Night” tells us a good deal about Van Gogh, his love of color, his view of the abstract, even his turbulent emotional nature. If you’ve seen Van Gogh’s paintings, you’ve experienced him to a certain degree. He’s not in the painting, but his nature can be experienced through our enjoyment of the painting. It is the same with God and the sunset, and by this, I don’t mean God, as a concept, but Jesus Christ, as intimately involved in the creative process.

 

John says that Jesus was “in the beginning with God. He created everything there is. Nothing exists that He didn’t make. Life itself was in Him, and this life gives light to everyone.” It was this intimate, personal involvement with creation that gave me the confidence to state that if you have seen the sunset, you have seen Jesus, its Painter.

 

Recently, I have found this power of natural revelation to be true in a very dramatic way. Apparently one of the world’s most respected atheists has announced in his eighties, that he is no longer an atheist, but a theist. In other words, he now believes there is a God. This is a huge move especially when you consider this person has made a name for himself in his unbelief, and his identity must be linked to this position in a very powerful way. He’s risking his life’s work in coming out with this. And to what does he credit this incredible reversal? The sunset. There is simply no way in his imagination that such beauty can be explained without a designer, a creator, or a Mastermind behind it. The man simply saw one too many sunsets to not believe there was a Creator involved. The sunset is a powerful thing when even a crusty, self-proclaimed, famous unbeliever can’t deny its Author. Remember this the next time you see one, and worship.