The other morning, Chuck called me, all hyped up. He was taking the girls to school. “I know you are busy, but the sunrise is incredible! If you would leave right now and go to that peak at the park, you would still be able to see it. But you have to hurry.”

I hung up the phone and looked out my window; all I saw was a blurry, dismal gray. Not much of a motivator to leave my warm house and hot coffee. But I did.

I grabbed my keys and drove out of the little hollow that my house sits in and headed for the highest, closest place I could find. Even as the Jeep climbed up the first hill, the light started exploding around me. In my rearview mirror, I got flashes of reds and pinks in the sky. I strained to turn around to see it but couldn’t. Now I was totally motivated.

I drove back down another hill and back into the gray. Waited on a break in traffic. Where should I go? Time and colors were burning. The park was too far. Finally, my turn. Onto Northshore, I turned left. I climbed again but this time I was facing the sun. This time nothing between me and the sky.  I reached the top of a undeveloped subdivision and flash, there it was: the sun and blood reds and warm pinks slashing and splashing across the sky.

My heart was racing. All I could say for a few minutes was, “Wow.”

So quickly the colors in the sky merged and cooled and stretched out. Like an artist had just plopped some paint on a canvas and then with a loving stroke had smoothed them and diluted them into long, lovely strands.

“You sure are a show off,” I said quietly. And I heard, “My mercies are new every morning.”

As I have pondered this over several days, here are a few take-aways:

One, I want to be quick to share when I see something beautiful. If Chuck hadn’t called me, I would have missed this gift.

Two, I want to be quick to respond. If I had depended solely on what I could see, or if I had tarried, I would  have missed out.

And three,  I want to be quick to live in the reality that as beautiful as that sunrise was, it does not compare to the beauty of His mercy. That was the greatest gift — the reminder that every morning, because of Him, I get a clean slate to begin painting on.

“One thing I ask, and I would seek, to see your beauty.”