We were watching a sunset on a rise beside the lake. We got out of the car to better appreciate the wonderful thing that was happening out there.

I won’t try to describe it by presuming to bring a sky –full of magnificence down to a couple of lines on a page. It was too profound.

Words were superfluous, we simply stood and watched. The sky above was full of sunset and the lake below was full of sunset. Up was down and down was up. Sunset surrounded and engulfed us, washing up from beneath and flushing down from above. We were covered with sunset. We stood in quiet awe between eternity and night.

As our faces numbed in the chilling air and our toes shivered, we rubbed out hands together and settled back into the car. The purr of the engine assured us that warmth was on the way and our little conversations emerged.

“That was wonderful!”

“Oh, the molten gold!”

“What rich, deep purples!”

I kept very quiet because they had it all wrong. By far the loveliest moment was when it was all muted blue and silvered lilac and rose pink with a froth of baby’s breath.

You see? We all saw it through different eyes, we did not see the same sunset at all. We will all remember if differently. It will forever mean something different to each of us.

But two things we will always agree on – you can’t reduce that glory to words on a page; and we were totally awash wish unutterable beauty.

And somehow it made a statement about a Word that could not be contained in a Book; and a washing that covers everything, even the differences.

‘Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.”’

John 13:8.

Elizabeth Price, Team writer with Just a Minute reprice@dragnet.com.au