Same Trees, Different Light

As I flip through pictures from a recent trip, I’m reminded how breathtaking this world truly is.

There’s something about nature: its stillness, its beauty, its grandeur, that stirs deep gratitude in me.

One evening, as I sat on the balcony listening to the waves of the North Atlantic roll in, I took a photo of two palm trees.

The sun had just dipped below the horizon, and the sky turned a blue so rich it looked almost unreal.

I sent the image to a friend with the caption, “Can you believe this? No filter. Not fake."

The next morning, I returned to the same chair and looked out at the same trees.

The sky was blue again, but in a softer, powdery hue.

It was still beautiful, but everything felt different: the light, the mood, even the rhythm of the waves was a new experience. And somehow, despite its beauty, it seemed more typical, and I didn't feel compelled to send that picture to my friend.

That’s when it hit me.

Of course, the trees hadn’t changed.

But everything around them had.

And because of that, they faded into a supporting role beneath the sky’s new brilliance.

Context changes everything.

Life is like that.

What once felt sacred or dreamlike can seem ordinary just hours later, depending on what surrounds it or what surrounds us.

The same scene can feel different depending on the time of day or the state of our hearts.

Clouds roll in.

Sunlight breaks through.

Dusk settles like a velvet curtain.

With each shift, the world changes.

And so do we.

Life, like light, is ever-changing.

What we see and what we feel depends not just on our surroundings but on what’s going on inside us.

Our mindset is the backdrop. And it colors everything!

So much of life is temporary.

The hard moments. The confusing ones. The radiant ones, too. 

We tend to notice the big shifts like sunsets and sunrises, endings and beginnings.

But the quiet transitions, the changes between dusk and dawn, are easy to miss.

But those moments are sacred, too!

Just look at the trees. Same trees.

Different light. Both beautiful.

Maybe our lives are like that, too.

Maybe the miraculous is always there.

Hidden just beneath the mundane.

Posing as the ordinary.

Never gone.

Just waiting.

Waiting for a shift in light.

Waiting for a shift in us.