Well, the raccoons had a raiding party last night. Cleaned one feeder out on the side yard and took down the feeder with hot pepper seeds but didn’t eat any seeds so maybe a taste of the hot pepper sent them away. My cage is supposed to come tomorrow so I’ll be feeding them a few marshmallows to relocate them. They love marshmallows.

Today the sky was filled with the prettiest collection of clouds I’ve ever seen. I just stared at them trying to remember all the colors that I could see. The sky close to the horizon was turquoise and filled with little puffy clouds in flint and silver grays and smokey blues and pale purples. The high sky canopy was winter blue and filled with ridges of rounded beige clouds kissed by the sun making the skyline resembled a mountain range with snow on the highest peaks.

Mother Nature let the clouds take over the sunset pageant tonight, keeping the sun hidden and brushing a soft pale gold glow across the horizon to set the stage for the layers of clouds to welcome the twilight. The fluffy pillows of clouds were dressed in magical colors of gray and purple and gold, their edges trimmed in brilliant white, as they slowly floated across the stage of the evening’s gloaming. The sun, unseen and bedded down in her cloud covers, turned off the day’s light and kissed Father Sky goodnight.

In the whispers of the coming night, Father Sky woke the waxing gibbous moon on its 11th day of the lunar cycle and helped him up to the top of the sky canopy stage. Sprinkled on the night stage with the silver moon were millions of stars, their pin pricks in the sky canopy gleaming like diamonds from the Crown Jewels. The stage was set for a glorious awakening of the dark of night. The night has come and the day will dawn. I’ve decided the night sky is as beautiful as the sky at sunset.

Ever read something you just felt was meant for you. Read this today in one of my devotional books and it just speaks to my heart. Here’s the paragraph written by Frances Gunther. “All the wonderful things in life are so simple that one is not aware of their wonder until they are beyond touch. Never have I felt the wonder and beauty and joy of life so keenly as now in my grief that Johnny is not here to enjoy them.”

This paragraph describes how I feel about all the wonders in nature and life that somehow I just never appreciated till Chief died. I’ve always noticed the beauty in the world but never thought of them as gifts from God. Maybe I just took them for granted or maybe my life just moved too fast to observe them.

We don’t think of life’s fragility and life is so, so fragile. Some of us live long lives, others get a fraction of life. We are not guaranteed tomorrow, either. Psalm 90:12 says in a prayer, written by Moses, “Teach us to realize the brevity of life, so that we may grow in wisdom.” The Bible describes life as a “fleeting shadow,” a “mere handbreadth,” a “mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.”

We need to wake up each day and thank God for another day’s breath. Sounds silly, but every day when I wake, I smile and say, “Thanks, God, for another day.” And at night I tell God thanks for another beautiful day on our wondrous planet. Life is unpredictable. Just when we think we have it all under control, life changes, and the world throws a few rocks on our path. Sometimes the rocks are huge boulders and the road seems impassible.

I’ve had some times when I stumbled through life, thinking I’d never be able to stand up straight again and get on with living life. But I weathered the storms and with faith and with prayer I learned how to put one foot in front of the other and begin to see the sunshine on a path walked with God’s love. Isaiah 40:31 reads, “Those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they’d shall walk and not faint.”

We need to reach out to God when we are struggling. God can give us the strength to stand and to soar above the storms in our lives.

“It is only in sorrow bad weather masters us; in joy, we face the storm and defy it.” — Amelia Barr