Back this morning from my grandmother visit with the grandchildren. Beautiful drive home, dark blue sky, fluffy white clouds. Stopped for a cup of coffee at the Hardees in Franklin and looked over to see a huge dead tree full of buzzards, sitting like inky black statues among the grey rotten tree limbs. I’m beginning to think I attract buzzards.

Enjoyed the boys’ band concerts and was thrilled with their track meet. I loved watching them race around the track and watching Emerson in the long jump but I was really intrigued with both boys’ hurdling. Never thought about a Saunders hurdling down the track in a race. I love it! We have hurdlers in our family now. Told Emerson I was going in training for him to teach me to hurdle since he had taught me how to get the basketball through the hoop with the granny throw. Thomas quickly spoke up, “Nope, Patty can’t hurdle.” I think he thought I was serious about hurdling. Can’t hurdle, ha ha! I couldn’t even step over the hurdle, much less jump over it. We had a happy laugh about hurdling, though. As E.E. Cummings said, “The most wasted of days is one without laughter.” We always have lots of laughter on my visits.

Spent the day perched on my porch swing enjoying the glorious spurt of spring — the warm sunshine, the crisp white blooms of the pear and crab apple trees contrasting beautifully against the dark blue of the sky canvas. Father Sky sketched bleached white clouds and lightly shaded their bellies with his grey cigar smoke. Four buzzards were riding the wind thermals, winding their way up in the heavens. The yard was a continuous bird song symphony accompanied by a single note from the largest of my wind chimes. The breeze was just strong enough to ping the same two pipes against each other over and over again. The symphony was broken up by the screeching of a railroad train, its piercing high whistle hurt my ears.

I ate my supper on the porch tonight watching the falling twilight drink in the sunset and wake the night. Mother Nature brushed her water colors of huckleberry and aqua across the sky and the sun, dressed in her gleaming evening gown of ivory white, began her walk down the pageant stage. As the sun took the arm of Father Sky, a small fire of ripe peach flamed up briefly across the horizon, quickly snuffed out by the heavy huckleberry colored clouds. Father Sky kissed the sun good night and left to wake the waning crescent moon and the twinkling stars. The day ends, the night begins.

Heard this line from a country song on the radio on the way home from Peachtree City this morning. “I only talk to God when I need a favor,” Jelly Roll. I pondered on it and decided I’d been guilty of this. Sometimes our prayers are daily and sometimes we only talk to God when we need a favor. We try to barter with God with our promises of doing better, of getting back on the path to righteousness, back in God’s graces. We don’t earn God’s grace and we’re not entitled to God’s grace. God gives us grace freely. His grace is a gift of mercy and love. Ephesians 2:8 says, “For by grace are you saved, through faith, and that not of your selves.”

We need to have daily prayer, conversations with God to thank him for our blessings and to ask for peace when our worries are heavy on our shoulders. We need to pray for our world and its troubling times. Prayer has no right or wrong way. Just talk to God and tell him what’s on your heart. Just a simple thank you for another day on this wondrous planet is a good place to start.

“If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.” — Meister Eckhart