What fascinates me here is the brightness of the sun's reflection. Both the sun and its reflection on the ocean water are captured in the photo, making the sun's effect on the image doubly bright.
There's one source of light, the sun, the appearance of which is made twice as intense by its reflection on the surf.
It's funny what this made me think of--a scene in the rock opera, Jesus Christ Superstar.
When I was in college at LSU, many and many a year ago, I went to a road-cast presentation of that incredibly expressive musical play. It blew me away.
Which is to say. . .I enjoyed it very much. The music therein is an incredible piece of work, composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. I think those guys wrought a new genre at that time--a thing called rock opera, which was as fresh and new in 1971 as, say, the original opera genre was for Italians back in the day when Verdi was composing great emotive arias with incredible cadenzas and powerful ensemble singing scenes.
Among the many amazing scenes in that play is one that endures in my memory even to this day. It's a dim recollection, in the sense that I can't recall exactly which scene it was; but I do remember there, in the scene, there was some kind of exquisitely choreographed crescendo of frantic motion and dissonant voices, disintegrating musically into librettic confusion and wild cacophony, when suddenly--a presence, a dramatic presence, accompanied by overpowering musical intervention, personified by the entrance of some powerful entity, maybe a king or a gifted leader. . .the entrance of the man, Jesus, eclipsed all the singers' disintegrating harmony as the superstar of the show arrived upon the scene.
A bright light overpowering darkness.
Here's a version of the scene that I found online:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QG1JWJFGfOU
When I ponder what happened in that scene at the Temple in Jerusalem, I think of it this way, as the prophet Isaiah had foretold, in the 60th chapter of his prophetic writing:
"Nations will come to your light, and kings
to the brightness of your rising. . ."
The brightness of his presence eclipsed their depravity.
And that overpowering illumination is what I thought of when I viewed the sunset pic, which I inserted at the top of this here blogpost.
As for the rock opera, Jesus Christ Superstar, I consider it a musical work of absolute genius, but I do have one problem with the play. . .
no Resurrection scene.
About seven years after I was blown away by that awesome musical stage production, I arrived at a point in my life when I came to believe that Jesus did indeed rise from the dead, and he will come again, as Messiah for all the world, and on that day. . .
Nations will come to his light, and great men and women will be drawn to the brightness of his coming.
You believe that?
Whether you do or not, watch a video of Jesus Christ Superstar. Then decide for yourself whether there should be a Resurrection scene. I hope you can rise to the occasion.
Glass half-Full
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