The sky is so, so beautiful this morning, robin egg blue, covered in places with crisp white mackerel scale clouds slowly floating and spreading their scales across the horizon. My yard is swarming with birds. I’m sitting in the swing pondering and watching the little chickadees and titmice on a feeder closest to the porch. They love the gardenia bush and they all sit patiently waiting their turns at the feeder. They don’t argue like the finches.

Birds are so fragile. Their agile bodies tinted in colorful plumage only God could paint. I wonder if they know of their beauty. I’m watching them fly around through the yard from feeder to feeder and they fly like they are riding waves of air currents. I never tire of observing them. Two squirrels are busily eating and gathering sunflower seeds under the feeders for their stash of winter food. Squirrels are always busy. Their antics amuse me. They jump from the old oak tree, run down the power lines, leap to the bamboo, then to the large chestnut tree, performing their gymnastic routines.

Youngest sister-in-law and her grandson, who had proudly killed a buck yesterday night, brought me a prize this afternoon. I was thrilled with what was inside the Christmas wrapped box — a beautiful heated lap blanket, pale pink and covered in a red cardinal pattern. I love it! Penelope and I have been sitting under the blanket all afternoon. The visit and the blanket were my “happy” today. I told her grandson I had a raccoon that needed killing.

I turned my chair around late afternoon in anticipation of the sun setting pageant and I was not disappointed. The sunset was perfectly beautiful. The sun was perched on the horizon, a glorious ball of bright yellow light surrounded by a rainbow halo of orange. The sun walked down the pageant stage dressed in a blinding gown of yellow silk, dragging a train of watermelon-peach chiffon across the horizon. Mother Nature washed the pageant backdrop in soft brush strokes of her watercolors in variegating shades of watermelon, pink, blue, turquoise, and gold, so pretty with the layers blending all together. The sunset’s sky was covered in hot pink mackerel scale clouds highlighted pale purple on their crowns. Father Sky, dressed in his tuxedo of dusk, kissed the sun goodnight and covered her up in her kaleidoscope quilt of clouds as she bade the day farewell. Father Sky hung the luminous moon and pinned his twinkling diamonds on the night sky canopy and the evening came awake in the dark of night.

Read lots of great quotes while I sat happy and comfortable under my new cardinal blanket in my reading chair. One of the ones that spoke to me was “Friends in your life are like the pillars on your front porch. Sometimes they hold you up and sometimes they lean on you. Sometimes it’s just enough to know they are standing by,” Unknown. If you have even one friend you are blessed. My dearest friend has been in my life for over 40 years and we’ve both held each other up in troubled times and leaned on each other countless other times. And boy do we enjoy being together, much laughter always.

Do you think God can be a friend and a confidant? I do. God cares for us, comforts us, and listens to us when we pray. He encourages us and is committed to us. In John 15:13-15, Jesus says, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.”

God is free of worldly desires and expects nothing from us but for us to be close to him, to experience his blessings, to honor him by letting our words and actions bring others to his light and love. He wants our love and we need his love and blessings in our lives. We can lean on the strong pillars of his love and grace and he will bring us peace and light our way during our darkest hours. He is our pillar that holds us up when worries are weights on our shoulders and will graciously carry the load if we go to him in prayer and lay our burdens in his outstretched hands. We can trust in God’s words and trust that he will hear our prayers and answer them. God is always standing by.

“A true friend is not someone we have chosen for ourselves, but rather someone God has placed in our lives for a purpose.” From idle hearts.com