TWICE IN A LIFETIME

I've been pretty good the last couple of months or so walking outside for my morning 3.5 miles  sometime between 4:30  and 6:15 a.m.  I got kind of lax--okay, let's say it out loud--L A Z Y--during the winter months.  It was sooo easy to crawl out of bed, slip my feet into my walking shoes, and just traipse down to the basement to walk on the treadmill rather than put on my sweats, my reflective winter coat, and brave the chilly dark.

But I love "morning dark"!  It is so comforting even if it is downright cold sometimes.  Yet, I got out of the habit of walking outside when there was always a Netflix episode of something I was into ready and waiting in the CD player downstairs.  Right where I left off.  Untouched, since I am the only person who ever walks on the treadmill OR watches CDs down the basement.

On April 19th  I was coming down the neighborhood path behind the house just as the brilliant sun crested the horizon on the Eastern Plains signaling the start of another glorious day.  At the end of the path when I turned onto the sidewalk to finish the few hundred feet to home, I saw again the full Easter moon in the western sky.   I had admired it the whole way to the interchange before I turned around to walk home.  Only now, it was suspended right over Twin Peaks in an inky sky that set it off to perfection. One hundred eighty degrees to the west of a glorious morning sun, that luminous full moon hovered in concert with it over the Northern Front Range before slipping away into the still dark night shrouding the mountains.

In a flash I thought about that morning years ago when I was driving to work from the Secrest Court house to Super PC Memory on 108th just west of Wadsworth. ( I wrote about this experience in an issue of the Nichols Family News once.  You might remember that article.)

It was pitch black night over the mountains underneath a gloriously full moon, while to the east it was the brilliant sunrise of a new day.  What a juxtaposition!  I had marveled at the sheer splendor of that early morning phenomena, thinking how lucky I had been to see such an occurrence.

A couple of days  after that sighting, I spied a letter to the editor in the Rocky Mountain news written by a guy who had also seen that spectacular moonset/sunrise. In his message he expressed my own feelings of "AWESOME" (which is exactly what that word is supposed to be used for).  For several months after that I tried to "catch" the sun and the moon dancing in the sky like that again.  Then I realized:  that was not a common occurrence. So, I quit perusing the newspaper on a regular basis where I had been checking the times for sunrise and moonset when it was a full moon.

Then....without even thinking about it...there it was again just a few days ago!  I googled sunrise for that Good Friday morning.  Six thirteen a.m. in Johnstown.  And moonset was 6:45 a.m..  So, after the sun was fully up over the horizon, the moon was ready to tuck itself behind the mountains and call it a night.

I wanted to see it again on Saturday as the timing was still within those parameters.  Too bad.  It was totally overcast.  By Sunday that window had closed.

But that's okay.  After I saw that beautiful display--rising sun and setting moon 180 degrees apart from each other so long ago one November--it never occurred to me that it might happen again during a different time of the year.  Amazingly, it did!  I wasn't any less impressed this time than I was the first time I saw that unique display.

I believe the beauty of creation is a constant reminder of divine architecture which not only delights the eye, but gives celestial promise to our worldly home.

There IS a God in heaven!