I just got back from Dubai, on a trip that went through Bangkok, Mumbai, on to Dubai, and back again. Click the picture above to see some photos I took during my time in Dubai. That trip is always so tough on the body because we fly on the back side of the clock. For example, we left Dubai at 10:30 PM in Dubai, but our bodies felt like it was 3:30 AM, the time it is in Hong Kong when the clocks in Dubai say 10:30. Ideally, I would get eight hours of sleep prior to flying back to Hong Kong, but trying to go to bed at 11:00 AM and stay asleep for seven to eight hours is almost impossible. What ends up happening is that I’m awake during the day and then have to fly all night as well. So what do I do? I just fight through the fatigue, knowing that I’ll have a few days to recover once back in Hong Kong.

Because my body time was messed up, I had the nice opportunity to be up and awake for the sunrise. A true view to a sunrise can’t begin while there is already light in the sky — it has to start when everything is still completely dark. True magic happens in the few minutes between the first lightening of the sky and when the sun first peeps over the farthest edge of the earth. The sky has an infinite number of color shades from deep blue at the zenith of the sky, to a deep golden orange at the horizon. Seeing the sun come up is great, but once it appears, it washes out so many of the deep colors in the sky due to its brilliance.

My view from the 26th floor of the Shangri La Hotel Dubai was great because the windows in the room angle out at 45 degree angles to form a little place to sit and have about a 200 degree view of the city. I sat there in a few nice quiet moments, enjoying the sunrise, thinking about my wife, whom I haven’t seen in weeks and is so far away, and being encouraged by reading God’s Word.

It’s always nice to be reading the Bible while simultaneously witnessing something of a miracle of beauty in His Creation. I guess it helps me to stand in more awe of Him. In my case, it was just the simple, quiet sunrise. I think of how the astronauts of Apollo 8 read from the Bible when they saw the first “Earth Rise” on that Christmas Eve in ’68. “In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth . . .” In moments like that, what more can we do than quote the Creator?

By the way, it was Bill Anders who took, in my opinion, one of the most amazing photographs of all time. With one click, he showed just how fragile and yet how important humanity is, sitting on a small blue planet, out in the vastness of space. A picture of a far off galaxy is one thing, but seeing our own home, and putting it into perspective, is nothing short of miraculous.

Dubai has some amazing creators. The Burj, the tallest building in the world, is in several of my pictures. It will stand nearly 2,700 feet tall upon completion and is a sight to behold in person. It looks puny in the pictures — until one starts getting within a mile or so. Then, the magnitude of the structure starts to take full affect. On our approach charts for the arrival into OMDB (Dubai’s airport), the minimum safe altitude, or MSA, has been raised to 3,800 feet. The MSA has to guarantee 1,000 feet of clearance over any obstacle. It’s wild to see that high of an MSA in a flat desert, all because of one amazing building!

However, my pictures of the Burj pale in comparison to the EarthRise shot. It just goes to show that we humans are capable of remarkable things, but nothing beats the true Creator! It’s that same Creator who looks after my Sweet Pea while I am away for so long. It’s He that guides me through my tough training at Cathay and it’s He who brings matchless peace in a busy, stressful world. Sometimes, it’s just the simple things, like watching a sunrise, that remind me of who God is and what He wants to do for me and through me.  I need to allow the true Creator to create in me the type of person that he wants me to be.

TobyLaura.com