I’m up earlier than usual walking Penelope down the sidewalk next door. The day is beautiful dressed in blue, embroidered with white fluffy clouds and lemon yellow sunshine. “I’m walking on sunshine and don’t it feel good,” Zooey Deschanel. That quote is perfect for the happiness I feel today. I’m walking down the sidewalk I rode my bikes on during childhood, from bikes to unicycles to skates to skateboards, then to roller blades, something with wheels and I was off through the neighborhood to my best childhood friend Chip’s house or to the library for books.

Tom Stoppard said, “If you carry your childhood with you, you never become older.” Not a day goes by that I don’t have a happy memory of my childhood as I sit in the swing and ponder life in my little neighborhood. I know I grew up in a magical time in the world, free to explore and enjoy the wonder and freedom of a safe unrestricted childhood. Those days are gone and the world is spinning so fast we’re being slung around, clutching our life line of cell phones. Maybe we’ll slow down. “Let your life lightly dance on the edge of time, like dew on the tip of a leaf,” Rabindranath Tagore. The world is so pretty this morning as the dew sparkles when the sun hits the shady spots. Let’s all tap dance on life’s happy moments today. They go so quickly!

The late afternoon sky was full of Father Sky’s sketches of clouds, shaded with various colors of cigar smoke grays from his pastel box. The sky was an overcast monochromatic masterpiece in gray. Mother Nature prepared a closed stage for the pageant of sunset, hemming the gray horizon’s curtains with watercolored layers of aqua and golden honey. I can picture the sun standing on stage dressed in a formal gown of sterling silver taffeta embellished with gray teardrop sequins. Her rays are adorned with diamond tiaras, her slender arms rest in thin gray leather gloves. She wears Cinderella’s glass slippers on her feet. Not to be outdone, Father Sky dressed in a crisp linen suit of heather gray. His white silk shirt is buttoned with black studs, sterling silver engraved cuff links peeking from his shirt cuffs. A monogrammed handkerchief of elderberry blue peeks perfectly from his coat pocket. On his feet are his grandfather’s spit polished tan wingtip shoes. I see Father Sky reach out for the sun’s hand and they walk down the horizon taking the day’s light with them as they say goodnight to the day and good morning to the night. Such a handsome couple to take the day’s light away to welcome the night’s darkness.

I think having an imagination is such a wonderful thing. And I know mine works in overtime. In my creative writing class in college many times my words were read out loud by my professor. She’d reach down in a little brown paper sack, pick an object, and away we’d go to create something. I loved putting pen to paper and creating something with my imagination. I know our imagination is a gift from God and I think as we age if we don’t tap into our imagination occasionally we’re missing one of life wondrous workings. “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited… imagination encircles the world,” Albert Einstein.

I often wonder about God’s imagination. All the wondrous critters and creatures he placed on earth and all the magnificent watercolors of our natural world come from his imagination. He created the whole universe from nothing so he must have a marvelous imagination. Creating the earth was an expression of God’s creativity and an expression of his love for us. He wished for us to live in a beautiful world. God’s imagination fills the pages of the Bible. In Genesis 1:1-3 we read, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.”

God created the beautiful sunlit days, ending and beginning with wondrous sunrises and glorious sunsets and he put the luminous moon and the twinkling stars high in the night sky to decorate the dark heavens. God created light first and his light is the basis for life on earth. God is light. His light is a symbol of goodness and grace and hope. He created the light to dispel the darkness on earth both literally and figuratively. We’ll never have to walk in the darkness if we have faith in the light of God. 1 John 1:5-7 reads, “This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth.”

Jesus wanted his disciplines to let their lights of belief in him shine so the whole world could see God’s light. As the children’s song says, “Let your light shine and let Jesus shine through you.” As Christians we need to let our lights of faith shine brightly and help bring others from their darkness into the light of our Lord.

“The man who has no imagination has no wings.” — Muhammad Ali