Today was a glorious fall day. William Cullen describes it best, “Autumn…the year’s last, loveliest smile.” The sky was one big blue grin, cloudless, sparkling in the sunshine. I sat in the swing to watch the songbirds a little while before I did some much needed chores but the day’s beauty rooted me to the swing for several hours. I watched the teeny tiny bees, a cloudless sulfur, and a monarch butterfly dance on the yellow mums. The sun was hot on my cheeks. I fell asleep from the sun’s warmth and was jarred awake when my phone hit the porch tile. Spent the afternoon just enjoying the deep blue sky, the yellow sunshine, the songbird symphonies.

Mother Nature is now getting her palette ready to paint a glorious sunset but the sun herself is already snuggled up cozy in her vanilla cloud covers. Mother Nature brushed the horizon a light turquoise, blended it into the vanilla sky of dusk, and then retired her brushes for the night. The sun slipped down the horizon as a brightly rayed beam of white light and turned the day’s lights off. Father Sky was too busy hanging a large luminous moon to kiss Miss Sun goodnight. She was sung to sleep by the long wails and click clacks of a slowly moving freight train. I love to hear the train at dusk, its lonesome whistle echoing down the tracks in the magical mist of twilight.

Scripture tells us the moon is one of God’s “great lights for signs and seasons,” and a “faithful witness in heaven.” The moon is so glorious tonight commanding center stage on the night’s sky canvas. Looking forward to seeing tomorrow night’s Beaver Moon, the native American’s name for November’s full moon. The beaver moon is also a supermoon so he’ll appear larger and brighter than usual, an ethereal night light beaming straight from the heavens. I wonder if the little songbirds are watching this handsome moon tonight as he lights the darkness, his moonlight filtering down through the trees and bamboo fronds.

Saw a beautiful great blue heron this afternoon, its long legs dangling, its wings pumping in deep strokes, flying all alone, heading straight into the sunset. I love to watch the flights of birds. Some fly like the undulations of the waves in the ocean, some fly fast and straight, other dance in the air like ballerinas, some dive bomb to the tree limbs. Roy T. Bennet said, “If you want to fly, you have to give up what weighs you down.” You watch a bird in its flight and you’ll see how weightless they appear.

I think we all have the ability to fly. “God gives us the ability to run when all our strength is gone. He even gives us the ability to soar against all the gusts of wind — the circumstances of life that seem to make it impossible to keep moving forward,” Jeff Syverson. We just need to get rid of our past experiences that weigh us down and clip our wings. We have to let go of things that limit our flight, free ourselves from low self-belief, low self confidence.

Be brave and step off the branch and strive to reach your full potential. We determine how life’s failure affect us. We can learn from them or let them add weight to our wings. Isaiah 40:31 states, “But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”

The experiences we have in life can help us fly or anchor us to the ground. We are the only ones who decided how we fly and how far our flight takes us. God is always standing by to catch us till we learn to fly. Trust in the Lord and you scan soar on wings like eagles.

“It is beautiful to discover our wings and learn how to fly; flight is a beautiful process. But then to rest on the wings of God as He flies: this is divine.” ― C. JoyBell C