Bluest of blue skies this morning, clouds the colors of blinding white snow and ripe grape clusters, resting in the beautiful azure bowl of the sky, like a crystal jar of colored cotton balls sitting on an antique oak mirrored dresser. Seems Father Sky can’t decide if it’s going to storm or the heavens just bloom with heat today. He has really out done himself with his cloud sketches. Never seem them more wondrous. They are melding together now, stretching themselves out and growing fat with rain in their bellies. I can see rain coming soon and down it pours. God is watering his beloved Earth.

I ate my breakfast bagel perched in the porch swing watching the cardinals and purple finches flitting around the bird feeders. The doves were playing power line tag, scooting down the lines away from each other, bobbing back and forth, then flying down to feed under the feeders. The squirrels, offended by the peppermint and cinnamon oil spray, have stayed away today. If it rains, they’ll be back tomorrow. And I’ll let them enjoy the feeders for the day.

I love this quote and it so true to the way I feel — “I don’t feed the birds because they need me; I feed the birds because I need them.” I can be out of sorts with myself and when I sit down in the porch swing and look out over my yard at all the birds visiting the feeders and hear all their glorious symphonies of happy songs I feel God’s presence and all is right with my world.

Today has been a good day. Breakfast on the porch, happy phone conversation with my sweet daughter-in-law, happy phone call from my oldest son, a Hershey chocolate candy bar mid afternoon, reading through my collection of quotes, leftover pizza for supper. We can’t always have a good day because clouds do show up on some sunny days and that’s just life. I love this quote, didn’t write down who said it and couldn’t find the author but the two sentences say a lot.“You can’t always have a good day. But you can always face a bad day with a good attitude.”

Teenagers always pop in my mind when I think about the word attitude. Attitude is the way we think or feel about something. Teenagers wear their attitude. You can see it on their face before they say a word. Our attitude controls so many things in life and affects the people around us. I love this quote by Tabitha Brown. “Have a good day and if you can’t, don’t you dare go messing up nobody else’s.” Some people are always miserable and want everybody else to be miserable, too.

If we face the things that cloud our lives with a smile on our face they’re a lot easier to weather. You wake up with a negative attitude and I guarantee you’ll have a bad day. Slap a smile on your face and the day will be easier to face. It may rain on your parade but look up and you’ll see the rainbow that follows.

I think faith is an attitude. If we believe in God we conduct our lives according to our belief. We understand that life isn’t always fair but through prayer and thanksgiving we can come to understand our challenges. We think negatively, we’re going to live negatively. We think positively, we live positively. If we focus our lives on God, we’ll live positively. God uses the circumstances of our lives to shape us into who he wants us to be. Our lives will be full of love and joy and peace when we have a meaningful relationship with the Lord.

Philippians 1:27 reads, “Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.” Life is full of sorrow and disappointments but also filled with joy and wonder. We need to pray and seek God’s grace and guidance in every aspect of our lives. As Christians our attitude should focus on the needs of others. Being grateful and thankful for our many blessings can keep our attitude positive. A positive attitude can be a blessing to us and those around us.

“Our attitude toward life determines life’s attitude towards us.” — John N. Mitchell