Finding Yourself in a Beautiful Place

Have you ever just found yourself in a beautiful place?  Tonight I drove until the road dead-ended into the Tennessee River.  Tonight, I found myself in a beautiful place. 

If you notice at the top of this blog post I attached a panorama shot taken from where I sat tonight.  To the east of me (on the left side of the photo),  a rainbow sprouted out of a storm cloud, and to the west, the golden sun slowly sank below the horizon.  Relaxing there in the cool evening air, I found myself surrounded by beauty everywhere I looked.

As I sat there taking pictures and soaking in the beauty of the moment, it occurred to me.  Where I sat was very symbolic of my life at this point in time.  Let me explain.  The past year and a half were a very hard time in my life.  The plans I had for my life were overturned and I suddenly found myself very unsure of anything.  What was God’s will for my life?  Why was this happening to me? Why did everything I loved have to go away?  It seemed that all I could see was the rain and the wind.

But recently I have begun to feel the sun begin to shine again!  The storm has passed and left me with beautiful weather and clear skies above and ahead of me.  Just like tonight, I gaze back and see the storms that I have come through.  Not only could I see the storm, but I could see the rainbow created by the sunlight hitting the rain; God’s promise of protection from storms.  Often times you can’t see the rainbow in the midst of a storm.  There may be a rainbow, but frequently it isn’t until you leave the storm that the light hits the moisture at just the right angle to allow you to see it.  God’s promise of protection through the storms in our life doesn’t ever go away, sometimes it is just masked by the storm raging around us.  Frequently it isn’t until you have come out of the storm that God’s promise of protection becomes abundantly clear.

So there I sat with a storm on my left, blue skies above and golden sunlight ahead of me.  I do not know what lies ahead of me.  Quite frankly I have no clue.  But I have finally reached the point where, while the beauty that lies ahead has not fully reached me, I can sense it’s presence and anxiously await it’s arrival.

I don’t know where life has you right now.  I don’t know whether it’s good or bad.  But this evening as I sat on the banks of the Tennessee River, I realized that even the in-between phase is a remarkably gorgeous place to be.  Storms may come, but God is faithful through them whether we see it or not and a shining light awaits us on the other side.  “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” (Jeremiah 29:11, NIV).

Have you ever just found yourself in a beautiful place?  Tonight I drove until the road dead-ended into the Tennessee River.  Tonight, I found myself in a beautiful place.