Your life is a gift, a grace that you must earn and cherish. Many people go out of their ordinary lives, when they can, to experience something or some place other than normal. As the years go by, how can you weave so many unique experiences? Do your special experiences seem disconnected from your everyday life?
The Sundowner understands the need for context and chooses this theme: All earthly life ends as the sun seems to end each day when it sets in the west. He or she selects a location (a stage) to watch the sunset at every opportunity. Enjoy the sunset alone, with interesting people or someone special, with great food and drink, in an exotic land, at a local outdoor restaurant, or from your backyard terrace. Wherever you are, have been or choose to be, the sun has set or will set to signal the end of your day.
Watch the mood change as hues of orange and red frame the flushed ball of the sun, and especially if there are high clouds in the west. Have you heard the saying: “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight”? At sea, a working sailor (sailor) works much more than a day from 8 to 5, partly because the sea knocks ships and boats to pieces, and ships must be regularly repaired, maintained, and upgraded to stay in sailing conditions. Another reason: work fills up the endless hours of floating on water while confined to a small space. With the crew exhausted from dinner, a good captain allows his sailors to enjoy the sunset (unless they are on watch).
The science behind the delight of a red sunset is that the sun’s rays bounce off the dust high in the atmosphere, which means that a high-pressure system (calm air) can rock sailors to sleep. in their hammocks. Jesus commented on the setting sun. Web search Matthew 16: 2-3.
I have seen a painting representing the “Last Supper”, in which Jesus celebrated the first day of the Jewish holiday of Passover with his 12 disciples in the city of Jerusalem. Several disciples who shared that final meal with him recorded what they saw and what he said. The painting shows windows in the second floor room, but I can’t find a description of Jesus looking at the sunset while dining with his disciples and telling them shocking things about the near future.
The setting sun would agree that it should be there, because the setting sun signaled the setting of the mortal life of the son of God. Jesus shared bread and wine with those who had followed him in his ministry, and linked (gave context) his pending sacrifice to food so that they would remember what he had taught them as they began their own ministries in the days to come. There would be no Christian religion and Jesus’ sacrifice would have been in vain for all of us if the 11 surviving disciples had not remembered the context of what they were taught and directed the creation of the Christian Church. Jesus, as a mortal, came out like the sunset at his crucifixion. Then, three days later, he defeated death to resurrect and receive from God all authority over heaven and earth. Web search Matthew 28: 1-20.