One Too Many Sunsets
John Fischer

Have you ever looked at the sunset with the sky mellowing red?

And the clouds suspended like feathers?

Then I say: you’ve seen Jesus my Lord.

I wrote these lyrics in 1969 while working at a camp near Santa Cruz, California after spending a number of afternoons watching the sun go down over the Pacific Ocean. The resulting song, “Have You Seen Jesus My Lord?” has lived on to enjoy widespread usefulness including certain Catholic and Lutheran traditions that have adopted it as a theme song for spiritual retreats.

I remember receiving some criticism over the message of this song being pantheistic—an eastern belief that God is in everything. My meaning was that God is in the sunset to the extent that Vincent Van Gogh is in “Starry Night,” his most well known painting. “Starry Night” tells us a good deal about Vincent—his love of color, his view of the abstract, even his turbulent emotional nature. If you’ve seen Vincent’s paintings, you’ve experienced him to a certain degree. He’s not in the painting, but his nature can be experienced through our enjoyment of the painting. It is the same with God and the sunset, and by this, I don’t mean God, as a concept, but Jesus Christ, as intimately involved in the creative process.

John says that Jesus was “in the beginning with God. He created everything there is. Nothing exists that He didn’t make. Life itself was in Him, and this life gives light to everyone” (John 1:2-4 NLT). It was this intimate, personal involvement with creation that gave me the confidence to state that if you have seen the sunset, you have seen Jesus, its Painter.

Recently, I have found this power of natural revelation to be true in a very dramatic way. Apparently one of the world’s most respected atheists has announced in his eighties, that he is no longer an atheist, but a theist. In other words, he now believes there is a God. This is a huge move especially when you consider this person has made a name for himself in his unbelief, and his identity must be linked to this position in a very powerful way. He’s risking his life’s work in coming out with this. And to what does he credit this incredible reversal? The sunset. There is simply no way in his imagination that such beauty can be explained without a designer, a creator, or a Mastermind behind it. The man simply saw one too many sunsets to not believe there was a Creator involved.

The sunset is a powerful thing when even a crusty, self-proclaimed, famous unbeliever can’t deny its Author. Remember this the next time you see one, and worship.

PDL