Another beautiful day the Lord hath made. Father Sky sketched a glorious blue sky with white cotton boll 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, 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 beautiful orchestra music plays as the camera pans out across the horizon highlighting the earth colors of the mesas and the plateaus, the valleys and canyons, the buttes and the bluffs, the rolling plains, and the sunrises and sunsets in watercolors only God can paint. When I traveled to South Dakota with friends in college we toured the Badlands and I was mesmerized by the colorful layers of the mountains’ earth, 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 rolling 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. You can rest assured that God will take care of your tomorrow, too. Live one day at a time.” All our tomorrows are already planned by God. “Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow,” Albert Einstein.

Years ago dearest friend told me to quit worrying about things I could not change or control, such sound advice. Most things that keep us up at night never even come to pass. I love the first stanza of the hymn, “Living by Faith.” “I care not today what the morrow may bring, if shadow or sunshine or rain, the Lord I know ruleth o’er everything, and all of my worry is vain.” God can take all that worry away if we go to him in faithful 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 tomorrow. 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 highlight their twinkles. Vincent van Gogh loved the night sky and wrote, “For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.”

“God is the light shining in the midst of darkness, not to deny that there is darkness in the world but to reassure us that we do not have to be afraid of the darkness because darkness will always yield to light,” Harold S. Kushner.

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