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Night that magnifies Your beauty

A terrible thing has happened.

In disbelief, shock, and rage, I feel my body tensing to a boiling point. Ever ounce of muscle draws tight like a bow string ready to snap. Something has to give.

I tie on my running shoes and grab my phone, kiss Katie and it's out the door. Running. Running faster than I have ever trained for. Running away from the city lights, away from the traffic of the street, away from people, towards the park in the valley. Yes, there. There are no street lights there, no electronics to hum or buzz, no people since the park has closed at dusk. There will be nothing to welcome me there but the blackness of night and the hum of the tree frogs calling out the night hours as they pass by. There I will be safe to flee from the horrors of reality. 

I run past the last of the street lights, past the last turn off, down the hill rushing towards the darkness. Faster, faster, I keep my eyes on the horizon of nothingness, straining to see what lies ahead and welcome to see that nothing does. I sprint farther and deeper into the darkness and am almost welcome to feel the hot humid summer air surrounding me in a thick haze. I know the route, I've run it before, yet running it in this desperate darkness presents its own eeriness. 

As I reach the first mile marker I begin to notice that I am not alone. There in the prairie, as far as the treeline would allow, glittering all over the tops of the grasses I saw them. Hundreds, no thousands, no, hundreds of thousands of lightning bugs each flashing at a chaotic and sporadic interval of their own choosing. It was like witnessing a hundred fireworks go off at the same time with no nucleus tying them together and driving them apart. As I continued to run I realized I needed to close my mouth for fear of sucking down one of these bright night creatures. I slowed my pace to a jog and finally a walk as it struck me--there is beauty in the blackness.

Sometimes beauty cannot be witnessed until night encloses us. We certainly will never see the beauty in the night if we do not seek to find it and we certainly will not find it looking in humanly lit places. It is only in the pursuit of God's inner quietness that we realize the beauty he has placed there. There, in the darkness, thousands of lights. I pass by some of them, some of them pass by me. You only see them for a fleeting moment and then they are gone--vanished into the black again. All throughout the prairie these little creatures of light rose and shone their lights, beckoning companionship. Overhead an airplane races through the sky with multi-million candlelight lumen headlights piercing the blackness ahead of it. It sickens me. I want to just be surrounded by the sparkling friends of light, guided by their warm glow. 

I start to run again, eager to see just how far this array of light stretches. As I move I look upwards and notice a clear patch of stars directly above me. As I run I continue to look overhead. I feel the sensation of moving forward at a fast clip yet the stars above me remain constant, unwavering in their location. Flee as fast as I can yet I cannot escape the beauty and majesty of God's own creation. He is always there and I am physically unable to outrun Him. His beauty shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it. 
In fact...the darkness magnifies it.
This video shows about 1/30th of the number of lights that could be seen by the dilated eye. Trying to describe the experience doesn't work. Perhaps you have seen your own lightning bugs glowing in the night sky so you have an idea about what I experienced. Perhaps you have even been to the prairie I have been to and know many of the same fireflies that I know. Either way, we will never know just what the other experienced, but we can relate. For God is the maker of all and creates all things beautiful--both those seen by the light; and the light, seen in the dark. 

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