Sun-Day

To be perfectly honest, I've never been a huge fan of the sun.  Usually it just feels like it's something that burns, gets in your eyes, makes you hotter than comfortable and signals the end of the beautiful, cool night-time that is filled with silence, sleep and a break from the busyness of the day.

But over here, I've been taught a really valuable lesson in loving and appreciating the sun in all it's glory, and for its array of vital and intricate life-sustaining functions.  Many of these are rather obvious, but be patient... it's only just really dawned on me! (Ha ha... ah.)

You can barely pass a hillside here in Nepal without noticing the terraced rice paddies, mustard fields, soybeans... the farming of so much wonderful, nourishing food.  The whole process relies so heavily on the sun and the rain in their days and seasons.  Without the sun, there would be no growth, no food, no livelihood for so many.

  

In Dadeldhura, it's been quite foggy and rainy... and although I still can't help but love this weather, even I find myself celebrating the sunny days.  We can do the laundry!  Our clothes are so capably and effortlessly cooked and dried by the sun, and once again we are clean and fresh.  

The roads dry up, and we can walk with ease.  

And of course, you only need watch a sunrise or sunset over the Himalayas to spontaneously and unavoidably whisper a prayer of praise and wonder to the God who created this sun and these mountains over which it hovers. 

But most of all, it's been the cold that's opened my eyes.  

There's something beautiful about wintertime.  Everything feels a little more still.  Cooking and eating stodgy, hot meals; drinking steaming cups of tea.  Rugging up in your winter woollies.  But sometimes the cold just seeps into your bones... and there seems to be nothing you can do to warm up, no matter how many layers you wear.  There's been days like that at the hospital.  It even becomes difficult to work, because your fingers are frozen out of usefulness for clinical work or writing notes.  Some poorer patients turn up without proper shoes or coats, and my heart just goes out to them.  But every now and then, even sometimes on the foggy, cloudy days... 

the sun comes out.

Suddenly, the central outdoors area at the hospital fills up with people just standing there, soaking up the rays.  Patients in the ward are wheeled or carried out by their relatives.  Staff carry out medical supplies to be sorted, rosters to be done... and settle to do them in the heat of the sun.  I join them, in the beautiful golden warmth.  The sunbeams filter through the clothing on my back... thawing my skin and warming my soul.  There's an instant lift in the atmosphere.  People seem cheerful.  Even the colours around us are brighter.  

What an incredible creation.  This star of the day around which our planet turns.

The God who imagined the sun, and gave source to it's light.  

Genesis 1:14-19

OK, I actually know lots of people who love the sun... especially some of my more summery, beach-loving Aussie friends back home.  But (to my shame), it's a new appreciation for me.  So, I'm joyfully and daily celebrating our amazing sun... and much more than that, the God who created it, and uses it to sustain us and our world.