The Awesomeness of fireworks

What's your favorite firework?

One of the highlights of living in a small college town is the Fourth of July.

There’s a penny carnival, where most of the booth operators don’t even collect the copper coins clutched in the children’s hands to play bean bag toss, get their face painted or bounce in bare feet in the inflatable jumpy house. Dum Dums and Tootsie Rolls clatter on the brick-paved street as library workers, firefighters and the mayor toss candy to the kids lining the curbs.

On scorching July evenings as our entire town gathers at the park, we eat icy-cold snow cones with generous pumps of sweet, sticky flavored cherry or blue raspberry syrup, and we’re certain to bump into everyone from former teachers to co-workers to friends our kids played with when they were toddlers. We’ve waved sparklers with colleagues from Canada and played pick-up soccer games with my husband’s international students from North Africa.

But of course the coup de grace, the main stage event is the fireworks.

Bang!
“That one looks like a jellyfish!”
“Oooh, I like that one!”
“The kind that shoots up like a rocket then has brightly colored fizzles is my favorite.”
Pop pop pop!
“No the green ones that change color to pink, those are my favorite. Oh, I can’t decide. They’re all my favorite.”
Boom!
“Wow!”
“That’s awesome!”

And we are. In awe. Starry-eyed and goosebumpy, like kids on Christmas morning, of the colorful explosions glimmering against the dark, night sky.

Snow cones dripping with red cherry or blue raspberry syrup taste like the Fourth of July

These sparks of light and celebration signify the freedom of our country, but they signify something more—possibility, hope, beauty.

Fireworks broken down are man made packets of gunpowder and fire with metal salts, such as sodium nitrate of calcium chloride, mixed in to emit different colors. So how much more can we be in awe of God, the creator of vibrant sunsets, roaring waterfalls, rainbow dotted fields of wildflowers, who does His work, not in a lab but with His imagination and magnificence?  God makes our hearts beat, our spines tingle, our eyes tear up with emotion. Have you taken time today to sit still and be in awe of Him?

I love the fireworks. I gaze completely content, undistracted, feeling fizzy inside when I watch them each year, like time has stopped and the world is filled with wonder, and I can do anything. Of course I am even more amazed by the way God loves me, blesses me and provides for me, and I am in awe of Him. Completely. Every day. But I don’t stop my life, pull up a chair, give Him my undivided attention and shout out, “Wow!” nearly often enough. Do you?