Today has been beautiful in so many ways! I had company come spend the day and we had a late breakfast brunch — bacon, sausage, country ham, fruit, biscuits, scrambled eggs, grits, and melted cheese. She loves breakfast and so did Chief. After breakfast we spent the day on the porch in the warm sunshine. So pleasant sitting in the swing, the smell of new cut grass in the air, the lazy quiet pinging of the wind chimes, the pretty singing of the songbirds, the happy conversation and laughter. We watched the birds and bumble bees. All the bumble bees were colored yellow from the pollen. Later in the afternoon we saw a little hummingbird on the nectar feeders. At dusk when I was watching for the sunset to begin I saw a fat ruby throated hummingbird buzzing around the feeders.

Today is Chief’s 89th birthday. I hope he celebrated with some fried oysters and a chocolate cake. I pretended I was cooking his birthday breakfast, that man loved his biscuits. I’d make a cookie sheet full of biscuits, freeze them, put them in a Tupperware container, and he’d take a few out and cook them for breakfast when I was working. We used to kid him about meeting Thomas Jefferson in heaven, the two of them sitting down together and comparing gardening notes.

Days before our family was diagnosed with Covid, Chief bought some new potatoes at his favorite feed store. We put the bag in the casket with him and told him to share the potatoes with Mr. Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson was quite the gardener. Chief loved visiting Monticello and seeing all of Jefferson’s gardens. I know Jefferson brought some ice cream to the birthday party. He’s credited with making ice cream popular in the United States. Chief loved ice cream, too! My dad was a wonderful gardener, too, maybe they invited him to join them.

As I sat in the swing with the twilight of dusk walking across my yard, the sun was filtering down through the old trees in my neighborhood so beautifully, highlighting the myriad of green tints in the spring’s new foliage. The flock of faithful cardinals were filtering around the yard and perching on my purple yard chairs. Father Sky sketched no clouds for Mother Nature to paint with her watercolors but she colored the evening’s light in beautiful colors of Siberian apricot, Gayla apple, and Belle of Georgia peach.

I watched the sun walk toward the pageant stage in a formal sheath gown of watered silk in the gorgeous color of xanthous, the gown’s straight sophisticated silhouette was embroidered with rainbow colored sequin appliqués of pansy booms and bumble bees. Father Sky was dressed in a modern navy blue tight legged business suit with a fuchsia plaid tie and xanthous handkerchief square. Father Sky and the sun made a handsome couple as they walked hand in hand down the pageant stage in the glorious Siberia apricot glow of the evening’s sky. As they turned off the day’s light, Mother Nature took her water color brushes and painted pale layers of Gayla apple pink and Belle of Georgia peach across the sky, the colors slowly fading out to welcome the darkness. Father Sky kissed the sun good night and left to wake the luminous waning gibbous moon and the diamond bejeweled stars. He placed them high on the canvas of the night sky. The nighttime pageant was officially beginning, the day gloriously put to bed.

I love this quote by Thomas de Quincey — “Call for the grandest of all earthly spectacles, what is that? It is the sun going to his rest.” I guess we could call the sunset a phenomenon, the beautiful colors of her pageant of setting each day. I see the glorious sun as a female but research says the sun has no gender but is usually referred as masculine and the moon as feminine. Guess I was chewing my gum and not listening in science class that day. I just see the sun as a beautiful young woman and the moon a luminous older gentleman.

I think God invites us to watch the pageant of sunset, to watch the day close beautifully, showing us the ending can be just as beautiful as the beginning, giving us hope for tomorrow. God’s sunsets are painted differently every day and he always surprises us with Mother’s Nature’s palette. We’re inspired by the glorious colors of Mother Nature’s watercolored clouds and emotionally moved by the wondrous shades of the horizon’s light when the clouds are absent.

Sunsets also teach us that every ending can have a new beginning. The colors of sunset can represent our emotions as we struggle to accept changes in our lives. Life is transient and nothing last forever. As we watch the colors fade from the sky we have the hope of a new beginning, a new awakening to our faith in God. We know through his grace we can start fresh each day, put the past away, and not worry about tomorrow.

As the sun goes to rest every evening let your prayers of thanksgiving ride the beautiful colors of sunset to God’s ears. Lay your burdens down in his hands and let his grace sweep over your life.

“When you see that sunset or that panoramic view of God’s finest expressed in nature, and the beauty just takes your breath away, remember it is just a glimpse of the real thing that awaits you in heaven.” — Greg Laurie