I’m sitting on the couch in our lounge and
looking out the window. It’s no longer morning, but the stillness of Sunday has
set in and I am glad to be alive to witness this day. The sun lights up the
houses across the street, and the dark clouds behind add to the effect. It’s
been raining the past few days, and now everything is clean, bright, and wet,
and colour stands out so well in the lighting.
Not all is beautiful. The leaves, which
once held their majestic sway in the streets, are now soggy and brown and make
for quite a sport crossing streets where they have not already been cleared
away. But the beauty is there if one will be open to see it. It’s always there.
Just this morning I saw a hundred thousand glistening rain drops adorning the
branches of a bare brown bush. So easily missed in this sorry-I-can’t-stop-for-you
lifestyle.
Which is why I like Sundays. Granted, not
everyone gets to sit back and breathe in deeply on Sundays, but I sure hope
everyone gets slow down at least somewhere in a week. I get to take stock of my
life, myself, my surroundings. And I get to appreciate the present – the moment,
the week, the people in my life.
There is beauty in people too… if one will
just look long enough to see it. Some say beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Others say beauty is inherent in the thing itself. I’m no philosopher, but I’d
say it’s both. The beholder has the privilege of recognizing the beauty that is
already there. Which is why I look for it. And is why when I see it I step back
to take it in fully.
I think of a children’s book I own: Who
made the Morning? (by Jan Godfrey & illustrated by Honor Ayres.) It’s about
Little Brown Bird’s quest to discover the maker of this beautiful morning. She
eventually discovers that it is God, who makes all things and who is always
with her. The last page of the book reads, “and to thank Him, Little Brown Bird
sang a happy song.” I find myself thanking God for another beautiful day, and praying
that my whole life will be a happy song.