Another beautiful day of winter blue skies courtesy of Father Sky and his box of blue pastels. The faithful cardinals dressed in their crimson robes and fawn brown cardigans visited the feeders this morning. The wind chimes joined in their symphony of morning prayers.

My neighbor across the street burned the weeds off his brick wall this morning with a flame thrower. Seriously! I kept hearing this strange noise so I went outside to see what was making that noise. He was excitedly burning the little patch of weeds between his brick wall and the sidewalk. I said, “There’s a little fire down there.” He said, Yeah, I know…my kids gave me this flame thrower for Christmas. I’m getting rid of the weeds.” Made an interesting conversation.

Mother Nature swept her watercolor brushes across the sky late afternoon like she was sweeping her kitchen floor, leaving bristle marks of muted pinks and golds on the clouds’ surfaces. When the sunset began I was in the kitchen so I missed the pageant tonight. I decided to paint the sunset from beginning to end in my mind while I was cooking supper. I dressed the sun in a formal gown of golden yellow sequins, placing her on the edge of the horizon, her bright rays warming the earth’s afternoon. Mother Nature then brushed the skyline in watercolors of ripe peaches, her brush strokes mingling into the turquoise blue of the evening’s gleaming sky. As the sun walked lower on the horizon, the peach colors became darker. The flames of a raging wildfire blazed deep red as the day’s darkness crept up. Father Sky, arriving too late to escort the sun, kissed her goodnight, tucked her in her peach quilted cloud covers and hurried off to help the moon and stars wake the clear cold night. The twilight shadows of day’s end extinguished the sunset’s wildfires. Another day ending and another day promised on this beautiful planet we call Earth.

I was thinking today of all the things I take for granted. I should change that sentence to all the things I should be grateful for. I think most of us take life for granted, not realizing to wake up with breath is a gift we receive every day. We lay our heads down at night just assuming we’ll wake up again in the morrow and hop on the busy train of our every day lives. We have so much to be thankful for and need to remember when we say our prayers to be thankful for our many blessings. We lay our worries in God’s hands and don’t remember to thank him for taking the weight of these worries off our shoulders. We need to think of God’s grace and our prayers as a way to make our hearts attuned to God. It’s hard to live a Christian life in today’s world, so many temptations around us to lead us away from God.

Hebrews 13:16 says, “Make sure you don’t take things for granted and go slack in working for the common good; share what you have with others.” We give God pleasure when we worship and make sacrifices in our lives, when we share with those in need. We can worship in our kitchens, our places of work, on the streets…. I think sometimes I’m worshipping when I’m enjoying God’s creation from my front porch swing. There is so much good in this beautiful and wondrous world. We sometimes forget to be grateful for all our many blessings, both large and small.

I deciphered one of my quotes from my little list of illegible quotes tonight. It’s one of my favorites. “When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hold on,” Franklin D. Roosevelt. That is the greatest! Think how many life situations that can pertain to. We’ve all tied our knots and held on. Clinging to the rope in life’s darkest moments, praying the knots don’t unravel. I think of the rope as faith in God. My mother always said, “The Lord never gives you more than you can carry.” I think this is her version of the Roosevelt quote. I mumble this sometimes under my breath, “Tie a knot, Lane, and hold on!” So thankful I have God to hold the rope, to tie the knots, to catch me when I let go and fall.

Read this quote on Facebook today. Didn’t write it down but I do remember the last part. “The true beauty of life is not how happy you are now, but how happy others are because of you.” We are all ultimately responsible for own happiness yet we search so fervently for our happiness from others.

Life is so fragile. God has given us life and light and a beautiful world. Let’s not take these gifts for granted.

“The more you practice the art of thankfulness, the more you have to be thankful for.” — Norman Vincent Peale