I work in an area of the city where there are no hills or tall buildings or tall trees for miles around, so I have a wonderful view of the sky. Every time I close, I spend my last ten minute break outside watching the sun set.
A few evenings ago, the sky was particularly gorgeous. Betwixt two massive purple-grey clouds, there was a chunk of orange sky, with tiny, fluffy clouds that were different shades of yellow. In either direction, the massive dark clouds reminded me that night was coming, but if I focused on the bright area, I couldn't help but think of those people thousands of miles from me who were seeing the same sight early in the morning. At times, it looked as if God had just thrown some water-color paint at a canvas and said, "That looks good. I'll keep it."
It was so freaking beautiful! Beautiful things put me in a contemplative mood. So I got to thinking: What makes something beautiful?
Is anything objectively beautiful? Does anything objectively have worth? No. For something to be beautiful, someone must be declare it beautiful.
Basically, beauty requires recognition. So, if no sentient life existed to see that sublime setting sun, then it would not, in fact, be sublime, would it? It would simply be one of the trillions of natural occurrences or formations that exist every day in our galaxy that have the potential to be beautiful, but go unseen.
Or do they? If there is no God, then the unobserved universe is not truly beautiful. It is just a collection of atoms that has coalesced in various patterns. Whoop dee doo.
And don't give me any of that, "The fact that it did that on it's own makes it more beautiful!" crap. The unobserved parts of the universe are not beautiful if they have not been observed. The insignificant sliver of space-time that we have experienced from afar may often times look pretty, but less than 100 years ago, those massive swirling nebulae and massive collection of stars and planets called galaxies would have gone unseen.
Now, are stars beautiful as viewed from Earth? Yes. Leaving the city and staring at the night sky is mesmerizing for me. But the twinkles in the sky do not even come close to what the celestial bodies really look like.
So, without someone to observe it all, the vastness of the cosmos is just stuff, with no inherent beauty to it. And that's sad. BUT, I don't think that any single part of the universe is unobserved. It was brought into existence in intricate detail by a God who loves to create. He made it, and He made it, and me made it beautifully.
And because He thought it was so awesome that it just had to be shared, He made us. He wanted us to learn and be able to constantly find new things to wonder at, so He didn't just give us the tools to go explore the universe right off the bat.
Instead, He gave us beautiful things to marvel at right here on Earth. The Grand Canyon. The Cliffs of Moher. The ocean. The forests. A lover. A newborn baby. The night sky. The sunset.
I firmly believe that the universe will be seen in it's entirety. For me, that's what I want heaven to be. The same vast expanse of space, but literally infinite, and a spaceship. And pizzas. God will say, "Go out. Look at all of the beautiful things I made for you to marvel at. And if you want me to explain something, I'll be here to help you out. Have fun in My creation."
Until then, I'll settle for the sunsets.
image: me (this is from Africa, not Minnesota)
***
I thought all that, and then looked at the time, and raced back inside. I clocked in two minutes late from my break, but no one noticed. Oh well. It was a really nice sunset.
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