It was warm this morning and Penelope and I pondered on the porch during a light rain shower. The sky was overcast and marbled in a myriad of gray. I ate my bagel and enjoyed the cardinals. The cardinals love these rainy days. They’ve been all over the feeders on both sides of the yard, the males dressed in their crimson robes and the females gowned in fawn brown plumage, frolicking on the porch bannisters. One little wren sat on the bannister outside the lady den windows in the rain and just sang his little heart out. I was thinking maybe he was singing a song bird version of Singing in the Rain. Once the wind picked up Penelope and I had to come inside and ponder in the lady den.

Today has been a rain day, kinda like God playing a symphony of rain lullabies, loud some times accompanied by wind percussion, then softly with drum brushes, setting the bamboos to swaying and bowing their heads in thanks for the life giving rain.

I sat in my reading chair in my room early afternoon and watched the Wallenda squirrel brothers perform their acrobatics from the bamboo stalks to my roof and back. They really put on a show and they argued with each other during the whole performance. Their antics are fun to watch, their tails constantly twitching, moving like a flag in the wind. I bet they slept well after all their running around. They looked like they were playing dodge ball without the ball.

Just checked the sunset pageantry and Mother Nature had stroked some turquoise across the horizon. Father Sky is interfering with her painting, his thick gray rain clouds covering the sky canvas. She’s trying to add some peach and pink and a stroke of purple to her sunset painting, the brush strokes just visible in a small bright white opening in the line clouds. I think the sun is gowned in a silver gray light tonight, her formal full sequined cloud ruffled skirt covering the whole horizon. A beautiful sunset pageant in gray and silver with a soft turquoise wash of light, barely seen.

I walked Penelope down the broken oak root sidewalk at twilight and we saw a small watercolor bloom that Mother Nature had brushed in across the horizon. The colors made me think of Jolly Rogers’ sour candies — blue raspberry, golden pineapple, and mango — colorful and translucent.

Father Sky is going to have to push the sun’s cloud covers away to kiss her goodnight. She slipped down the horizon, early to bed in the cloudy dusk of day. Don’t think Father Sky will be able to wake the moon and stars tonight. They are under their gray covers, too, sleeping under God’s blanket of clouds and rain.

I love to think of inanimate objects as being alive. I was thinking about cedar trees, as I crawled under two of them to put water in their tree stands, wondering, if in the forests when we walk by, are the cedar trees hoping to get chosen, to be chopped down, taken to a home to be covered in Christmas baubles and warm necklaces of colored lights. Or do the cedars hunch over, hoping we will walk by them and not notice their hidden beauty.

Guess we are like the cedar trees. Some of us are pruned by life’s trials and tribulations, others of us stand tall and straight sure of ourselves and our place in the world. Others of us are hunched over, shapeless with misery and grief, in need of the colorful lights and ornaments to brighten our world. Some of us are scraggly Charlie Brown trees till someone sees the goodness in us and realizes we are beautiful even with all our faults.

We can decorate the branches of our lives with God’s love and grace. We can bedeck our lives with garlands of His love and stand tall and straight in His light. We can color ourselves with the beautiful lights from Mother Nature’s sunsets and pick one of Father Sky’s twinkling stars to rest on our heads like a crown. With prayer and thanksgiving we can light the earth. Our smiles and thank-you’s and moments of kindness and understanding can go a long way in beginning to decorate the world’s Christmas tree.

An evergreen tree symbolizes eternal life and Christ is our eternal light. We are anchored by the roots of our faith and our faith in God we will help us flourish where ever we’re planted. God will always choose us in the forests and he will adorn us with his love.

“Our task is to stand tall in God’s love, secure in our place, sparkling in kindness, surrounded by his goodness, freely giving to all who come our way. You, me, and the Christmas tree. Picked, purchased, and pruned.” —Max Lucado