"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep."

From my porch/balcony, i can see some of the sky line that is created by the mountains surrounding Boone. This porch area has become one of my favorite places in the world, and as i was out there just a short while ago reading and mind-wandering, one of the many things i began to wander around in my mind is that living in the mountains has done an amazing thing to my definition of beauty.

Although i hesitate to even try, i must really attempt to describe what i saw. It is a bright night, and as i had noticed earlier, the moon was an especially stellar white, the kind of white that takes you by surprise in its violent nature. It's one of those nights where the sky is not black, but actually this deep violet-blue shade which i think i wasn't aware of until i came up the mountain a few years ago. For all that, though, there was even more to be had for the patient admirer of God's art, and in the way of a picture of subtleties rather than explosive power. If you were to imagine this in your mind, and you let its eye drift down from the stars and the moon towards the mountain silhouette, you would swear that the sun would rise in the next two hours, because up from that dark silhouette was a haze of blue that you would only expect to shortly precede one of our famous sunrises. And yet, it was barely past midnight. It's as if the sun is just begging at the door to be let into another day, but it knows that even in its power it still has its boundaries.

i am a firm believer that the realest beauty contained in this broken world of ours is absolutely never immediately evident. The beauty of a Proverbs 31 woman or the beauty of a scene like i witnessed tonight or the beauty of a God who would die for sinners and then conquer death itself--all of these are filled to overflowing with beauty, and yet not a one can be recognized in its fullest sense without some change in perspective and a depth of searching which does not come naturally.