The sky is glimmering with orange and pink as the sun announces it’s coming. Slowing rising from behind the tree laden Missouri mountains a new day is beginning. The water is facing up in anticipation of it’s arrival. The birds are tuning their voices; everything waits silently of the bright appearance of the Sun.

I am lost in the wonder of the consistency of this moment. Day after day, year after year, generation upon generation …. forever the sun has risen and the sun has set. I now join the audience of creation waiting for the curtain to lift and another gift to be given.

I am filled with gratitude! Grateful that I have had the honor to live under this sky, breathe this air, and to know my fellow travelers. I am excited to live another day, to share another moment and to be a part of the concert of the living.

Gratitude, that’s all I can say, feel or think! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

There it is that faithful glow, that bright brilliant ball that gives light and heat. “Light be” Life be” Love be”

It’s like the conductor smiled and started his opus; the birds now join in the song of the day! Here it is! A new day, enjoy! The silence is now filled with so many different calls from my flying feathered friends. The colors rush across the lake, orange, red, yellow! Quick look now this painting will give way to the day.

Now I can’t look right into it… it is just too much! I don’t want to but I must look away ….. to what, to who is around me!

This piece of art must be lived, experienced, never will it be capture or purchased and hung in an art museum. No, this work of art is something you must participate in personally.

I hear her in the house, stirring! Did I say it? I am so Grateful! We’ve shared so much. We have so many memories and yet we are looking forward to so much more! I can’t look straight into the sun, but I can see that brilliant light in her.

Gratitude, “thanks”, ( I think ) is the greatest key to living well! Gratitude for the simple provisions of God! For HIs Presence in the ordinary; so many people can only see Him in the extraordinary. Most of the time people are trying to recover some past feeling about something extraordinary rather that finding Him in this moment.

Now there are two suns; one in the sky and one in the lake! One is real the other a reflection! So perfectly alike that you can’t really tell which is which. I know that this clarity will only last a moment! The reflection will go on all day, but I won’t be able to make it out so clearly … until this evening when I will be looking the other way.

I’ll live today following the sun! Thank you, Thank you, Thank you. !

I’m so very grateful for 20,819 sun rises!!!! I’m looking forward to watching many, many more!!!

Thank you Lord!!!