Is it the day…?
When we were children my brother, sister, and I had a fun crescendo to what we called “vacation day.” We would ask for days, even weeks before the day we left, “Is it the day yet?!” Then we would bounce with glee on the day we went to the beach, “This is the day!”
What would it look like to expect uniquely beautiful sacraments of love this day? How might hopeful gratitude for each day affect our lives? What if we rose to morning light saying, “This is the day?!”
One might ask, “What if I can’t see anything good on my horizon?” That is the challenge to hope against hopelessness (Rom 4:18,) to seek beauty where the ugly is so strong. The prophet says in the face of an apparently hopeless, empty time,
17 Though the fig tree does not blossom
and no fruit is on the vines;
though the produce of the olive fails
and the fields yield no food;
though the flock is cut off from the fold
and there is no herd in the stalls,
18 yet I will rejoice in the Lord;
I will exult in the God of my salvation.
19 God, the Lord, is my strength;
he makes my feet like the feet of a deer
and makes me tread upon the mountains. (Hab 3:17-19.)
The psalmist said with the first light of morning, “This is the day the Lord has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it” (Ps 118:24.)
Shall we pray? “Thank you, dear God who creates first light, for this day.”