Last Friday morning as I headed into work, I noticed the sun just peeking over the horizon. There was a layer of clouds above the sun, so it was shining orange-red light under the clouds, illuminating them all the way across the sky. The illumination was brighter, of course, closer to the sun, but it was obvious that even the clouds to the far west were receiving some of the orange-red light. As the sun rose further, the clouds hid it and the phenomenon went away.

I’ve not seen that kind of sunrise (or sunset) often, but a few times have been fortunate enough to see it. One morning in Oakley, I was coming home after a bad storm during the night. The power had been knocked out at the nursing home, and flooding was occurring in a rear door. I looked to the east and saw the sun peeking through the slot just below a shelf of clouds that covered the rest of the sky. There was another rainstorm to the west of where I was, and I saw a rainbow (that’s right, a rainbow) to the west in that storm cloud, just for a few brief moments of time under the cloud shelf.

I’ve never seen such a thing before, and don’t think I’ll ever have the privilege of seeing one like that again. First, how many times have you seen a rainbow to the west of your location? Second, how many times have you seen a rainbow under a shelf of clouds?

The sky can bring wonder to the human mind, and if one looks up once in a while, can bring joy and peace, knowing that things are working as they were ordered to work. The sky can also let us know that we aren’t as all-fired important as we sometimes think we are, and that there are things we have not yet learned to control.

And don’t get me started on the night sky. It’s a wonderland of its own, and has recently been brought to dazzling clarity with the Hubble telescope and other advanced optical equipment. Active volcanoes in the solar system? We have pictures of them actively spouting. Water in the form of ice elsewhere besides earth? Comet dust? We’ve brought some of that back to earth. Close-ups of asteroids? We have that. A comet crashing into a planet? We have photos of that as it happened. Conundrums that challenge, puzzle, and mystify scientists and physicists of all persuasions and stripes? You can see the same things they see and marvel just like they do.

Take a tour of some of those web sites sometime. I think you’ll come away with a renewed appreciation for this creation we inhabit.