Contrasts

For the last week and a half, our family has been on a trip through Canada and Washington.  Today we were driving through the northwestern part of Oregon and into Walla Walla, Washington.  As we were driving, the landscape drastically changed.  From tree-covered slopes and beautiful grassland, it changed to the brown of the high desert.  Now this is my favorite type of scenery.  I absolutely love the high desert, with it's sand and scrub brush.  As we were driving through it today, I was trying to figure out why I like it so much.  Is it just because it reminds me of warmth, and cowboys riding horseback and watching the cattle on the plains?  Or could it be the contrast that the brown has with the green?  I can't think of anything that looks more picturesque than a large, southwestern house, with large, beautiful, vibrant green lawns surrounding it, with sprinklers watering it, and beyond, the dry, brown, scrubby brush high desert.  It makes the green seem so much more green, the lush seem so much more lush, and beauty seem so much more beautiful.  That is probably the reason why I love this type of landscape so much.

And as I was thinking about this, something else came into my mind.  The world is so barren, so stark and dry and ugly.  But because of it's "brownness", because of it's death, because of it's ugliness, it makes the Christian stand out all the more.  It makes the "greenness", the life, and the beauty of the Christian so much more apparent and appealing.  And that's the way it should be.  We are called to be lights, set on a hill.  What makes the light so inviting but the blackness of the night all around?  So it is with the Christian.  The blacker the night, the more barren the landscape, the more brilliantly we will shine forth.  When the people of the world will see us, they will "take knowledge of (us), that (we) have been with Jesus".