Sunset in Gili Air, Lombok, 2011.
We’d spent a whole day swimming, sunbathing, and cycling around the island. It had been an amazing day, and we’d gone back to the resort to get some rest before heading out later at night. But I was feeling restless and a little cramped up in our room, so I snuck out of the resort to wander around on my own for a while.
I chanced upon a pathway that suddenly diverged off the path I was walking on and decided to follow it, ending up on this quiet beach, just as the sun was setting, entirely by coincidence.
It was absolutely breathtaking. The sky was drenched in shades of pink, orange, blue, and peach in such a purposefully scattered way, and it cast a soft glow on the faces of the few people who were still lying around on the beach. It was the most beautiful sunset I have ever seen, and it was a perfect end to the few days we’d spent in the quiet little island of Gili Air in Lombok. I’d never heard of Lombok before that trip, so I wasn’t expecting anything. It turned out to be the most beautiful region I’d ever been to, as far as islands are concerned.
I’m not such a big fan of beaches or of islands, seeing as how I live in Singapore, which literally is itself an island. So the prospect of leaving my island home for a vacation on another island is kind of anti-climax for me. Lol. I’ve always preferred mountains and hills to beaches and the sea, but even then, there’s something about being faced with the sheer vastness of the sea that just calms your heart and expands your chest, somehow. Maybe because it gives you a sense of the Infinite, just like the sea doesn’t seem to end the longer you stare into the horizon. And when you’re surrounded by as much beauty around you as you are in Lombok, it lends a whole new depth to the experience.
“When the Qur’an says, “If the sea were ink for the Words of my Lord, the sea would be used up before the Words of the Lord were used up.” (Qur’an 18:109)… [it] affirms that [the sea is], for the Infinitude of the Divine Wisdom, the symbol of symbols; but they have this symbolism in virtue of their size…”
– Symbol & Archetype: A Study of the Meaning of Existence, Martin Lings
Someone asked me once before, when we were just itty bitty teenagers: “How do you know that God exists?” I said, “Because of sunsets.” Haha… Say what? :p I meant it, though. I didn’t know much (or anything at all, actually) about creeds, proofs, logic, etc. But to me, sunsets were one of the greatest signs of God, because their beauty went almost completely unchallenged.
I used to sit and stare at the setting sun and think that it’s amazing that the Painter would paint the skies in a different way every single day. No matter how good or bad a day you’ve had, the sun always sets at the end of each day, in the same place, at the same time (at least here in this season-less part of the world it does, lol), and yet no two sunsets ever look the same. But people don’t notice it most of the time because we’re too busy with our own lives. It gives you such a sense of perspective just to sit and admire the sunset. I couldn’t sit there admiring something so mesmerizingly beautiful without asking myself if this sunset that adorns the skies at dusk every day just comes into being by itself, by pure coincidence. There had to be a Painter.
But why did He do that? Why did He give us a beautiful sunset every single day even if we don’t really notice it? He didn’t have to. Why did He bother? He’s God. He’s got a million and one things to do. What was the point? Every artist tries to convey something through his art. What was God trying to convey with this beautiful sunset of his? And how could it be that this God who paints us such beautiful sunsets every single day is the same God that other people made to seem so rigid and vengeful all the time?
I didn’t understand. But I guess just asking questions is enough sometimes, even if they go unanswered until much later, because those kinds of questions take root in the deepest parts of your soul and push you towards a reality you could never have imagined for yourself, but that God has already planned out right down to every last detail.
“Look how the floor of heaven
is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold:
There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st
But in his motion like an angel sings.”
– Shakespeare
