Never seen a more beautiful day. Been trying all morning to think of the best way to describe the day and I’m not having much luck with the correct adjectives. Everything is clean and bright. The day is luminous and brilliantly clear. The sky’s dark blue, the clouds white as snow, the sun has bleached the rain from their bellies. The birds are frolicking around the bird feeders and bird baths. The day looks brand new like a copper penny, bright and shiny. It’s a copper penny day.

It’s dusk now and the horizon is bathed in the golden glow of the setting sun. The sun is dressed as a fireball of gold and orange shades, the full skirt of her pageant gown spreading her rainbow hues in all directions. I hear the freight train’s lonely horn and the clickety-clack rhythm of its wheels on the metal tracks. If you’ve ever heard the haunting whistle of a steam engine train at twilight you’ll never forget its romantic sound. So beautiful and so melancholy.

All my life I’ve live by a railroad track and I love to hear the horn’s wail and wheels dance as a train rolls by. Chief loved trains, too. There is something intimate and romantic about a train ride. We rode on AmTrack to Charleston, Virginia, to visit Monticello many years ago and he was just thrilled to be traveling by train. He was “journey proud,” as he said many times. I’ll never forget those memories and I’m thankful for the beautiful trip, a Christmas present from our son, Thomas and his wife, Ashley.

“Life is like a train station. People come and go. Some stay for a few stops, some ride with you for miles, some leave before you’re ready to say goodbye. But every person teaches you something, even if they’re not meant to stay forever.”

I think our life is like a train, a constant journey, from birth to death. We stop at many stations and choose to either keep going or step off on the platform. The landscape of our lives is constantly changing, people come and go throughout our lives. We stop many times but the train just keeps traveling. I love this quote by Marianne Williamson, “If the train doesn’t stop at your station, then it’s not your train.”

This quote seems simple at first but after pondering on it I wonder if it’s talking about missed love and opportunities that don’t come our way because they’re not right for us. We need to let go of wrong destinations in life and get on another train. Life offers many different paths to travel and we don’t all get to our destinations on the same train.

The view from our train window changes, too. As a child we’re full of wonder for everything we see out our train’s window, from farm animals and plowed fields to tall church steeples and city skyscrapers. We’re enamored by the rocking of the tracks and lulled to sleep by the train’s music. We grow up and still get pleasure looking out the train window as the landscape hurries by, thinking of plans in our daily lives, distracted by the hustle and bustle of our family’s modern living. We take a nap, as our train gathers speed, and wake up at the twilight station of our lives. Now we enjoy every moment of our journey, appreciating the evening sky and the twinkling stars above. We’re close to the end of our journey and the next station is eternity. We now stare out the window of our train and remember and appreciate every nuance of our life’s journey.

I think God is the conductor of our life’s train. God plans the route and provides the tracks but we choose the daily destinations. God trusts us as the engineer to drive our own life but he holds the map to our final destination. Let’s all get aboard. Jesus has already paid for our ticket.

“The landscape changes, the people change, our needs change, but the train keeps moving. Life is the train, not the station,”— Paulo Coelho