Another beautiful day the Lord hath made. Glorious blue sky with white cauliflower shaped clouds and clear yellow sunshine, a sultry summer day, sweltering like Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire. I filled up the bird feeders, washed the bird baths, and watered the garden and I was done. Just too hot and humid to pleasantly ponder on the porch. Sat down in the reading chair and got hooked on The Return to Lonesome Dove, one of my most favorite western movies.

Ever noticed how wondrous the landscape and the sky are in western movies. Even in the black and white movies our eyes can imagine and create colors in the landscapes. The movie orchestra plays as the camera pans out across the horizon, highlighting the earth colors of the mesas and the plateaus, the valleys and the canyons, the buttes and the bluffs, the rolling plains and the prairies and the sunrises and the sunsets in watercolors that only God can create and paint.

When I traveled to South Dakota in college we toured the Badlands and I was mesmerized by the colorful layers of the mountains — the dark blues and browns and pinks and whites and oranges and myriads of red clay colors in the undulating shapes of the mountains. I can still remember seeing the colorful mountains out the plane window as we flew to Rapid City.

Heard this quote on tv today, “Don’t worry about what might be, just learn to enjoy what is.” That is great advice! We spend so much time worrying about tomorrow and what might be, we can’t enjoy today. Worrying about tomorrow takes the joy out of today. In The Living Bible Matthew 6:34 reads, “So don’t be anxious about tomorrow. God will take care of your tomorrow too. Live one day at a time.” All our tomorrows are already planned by God. He knows the paths our days will follow and he’s walking them with us.

Years ago a friend told me to quit worrying about things I could not change or control, such good advice. Most things that keep us up at night never even come to pass. God can take all that worry away if we go to him in prayer. The anxiousness about what tomorrow might bring can be handled by God. God wants us to have enough faith to trust that he will take care of our tomorrows. He will give us the strength to face whatever comes our way.

Came across this quote in my reading this afternoon, “When it is dark enough, you can see the stars,” Ralph Waldo Emerson. When I was a child I thought the stars just popped out at night. I didn’t realize they were pinned on the sky permanently, hiding and waiting for the darkness to show their twinkles and shine. I think we have to go through darkness to see the beauty in life, to appreciate all the blessings from God, to appreciate the value of hope in our faith. We hope the darkness won’t engulf us but when it does God’s twinkling stars give us hope of a brighter tomorrow.

“I will love the light for it shows me the way; yet I will love the darkness for it shows me the stars.” — Augustine “Og” Mandino