A Summer Day

Sitting on the back deck In the beauty of the morning and my surroundings… the fresh fullness of the newly-garbed trees in the woods… the sunlight beaming on the outstretched leaves of the potted and inground plants… the birdsong filling my ears… the gentle reeze fanning my skin. I have a new-found appreciation for the setting God has set me in… to think that I get to live in this place!!... such a long-time answer to a long-ago prayer. I’m simply grateful. 

How quickly springtime is moving into summer! I feel that the days are rushing by. Ann Voskamp writes that the way to slow time is by giving thanks… that your appreciation of the moment and your gratitude for it hold it spellbound for just a minute – suspended in time - perhaps so you soak in it and absorb it into your soul… like nutrients that your body, mind, and spirit need… true soul food. 

The passage of the seasons of my life seems to be accelerating as well as I age… or maybe my appreciation of them is just deeper, aware as I am that none of us know how many “summer days” we have left to us to enjoy. 

I love what I read in fore-mentioned Ann Voskamp’s blog this morning: “The best way to prepare for what’s ahead is to be present to what is now.” And so I sit, doing exactly that. 

Every time I see a red-bellied woodpecker now and hear its throaty call, I wonder if it’s the one whose life nearly ended the other day in a crash into my patio door glass, and he is deeply thankful to be seeing and enjoying this new one. So am I. 

"This is the day which the Lord hath made; We will rejoice and be glad in it." 

(Psalm 118:24)