Day by Day

There was never a time when something magnificent wasn’t in bloom [in the garden.] ~Fish Out of Water

Every morning, at the first chance I have, I go to the window of my dorm and raise the blinds. “You and your light,” Rachel said once. Later I realized that I do the same thing at home, except it’s the room on the opposite side of the house from my room.

Last night, in the dregs of lamplight in the same solitary room, I had a long moment during which I wished I could leave all my worries and problems and be in a nice garden instead. Waking from the daydream, I thought, “Oh, woe is me. Everything in reality is just mundane and bleak and problematic and stuff.”

Somewhere in my half-asleep thoughts this morning I thought, “Well, that’s ungrateful. God’s given us so many blessings. Those shoes for $6.50 during after-Christmas shopping! Steal. And the belt on sale that my mom had been looking for! I don’t know what says ‘God-sent’ clearer than that. Oh, and the time my family got to spend with family friends the day before, and the friendships I have at college, and the generally good semester I’ve had, and the book quadrilogy that I have in the making, and all the food and shelter and clothing!” That square of direct sunlight on the floor is pretty nice too. And blue skies. You don’t see those every day.

Sometimes it can be hard to wake up in the morning, though. The day doesn’t seem like it holds much worth being awake for. Yet something, or a few somethings, always happen to make me glad to be living it. The LORD is much kinder and better than we often reckon Him to be. Though we are passing from year to year, we ought to walk day by day, faithfully, in the way that God is calling us to go.

“And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge–that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us, to Him be glory . . .” ~Ephesians 3: 17-21