Honour the day and bless the beauty it presents

Yusuf / Cat Stevens – Morning Has Broken (Official Lyric Video)

The day the Lord has made

As I sat in my living room thinking about how well today went, I felt I should be inspired to write something because there is a blessing that abides, abounds, and abodes with me that gives me an outlook and disposition I rarely can find words to explain.

Let’s look at any day in question, for in my case, every day for a long time has been a blessing, regardless of what happens in it, I have a triumphalist feeling that whatever a day brings will not dampen my desire to consider success and accomplishment.

Someone might say, the day has been difficult, probably, they even hate a particular time of day that it becomes a kind of confession that fulfils what inadvertently becomes prophetic. Whenever I wake up, I bless the Lord and would with great expectation address it as this is the day that the Lord hath made, I will rejoice and be glad in it. [Bible Hub: Psalm 118:24 (KJV)]

How can the day not turn out right if you have been given a day made by the God of beauty, wonder, and miracles?

The morning is a recreation

There are nights when sleep seems to desert me, I struggle to find the rest I need to be fresh for the day ahead. The alarm clock stirs me up as dawn breaks and I slap on the snooze button for the respite of another 10 minutes in which little is achieved compared to if you could get a snooze time of 30 minutes and consequently a power nap.

Then the strains of the hymn, “Morning has broken” seep into your consciousness as with a bounding leap out of bed, you want to celebrate the day like the first of the best, and you begin to own the beauty, the warmth, the bliss, and the sweet communion that it presents. “Mine is the sunlight! Mine is the morning, born of the one light, Eden saw play!” The hymn continues to define the day. [Hymnary.org: Morning has broken, Like the first morning]

The Boomtown Rats possibly unaware of the joy of the day or even the opportunity the week presents would sing in refrain, “Tell me why I don’t like Mondays.” I’ll tell you why you do not like Mondays; you do not see every morning as God’s recreation of a new day. Yesterday is gone forever, you are given a new start, each new day.

Then, the inspiration for the song itself was from a 16-year-old girl who thought causing the tragedy of a mass shooting at an elementary school would liven up the day. [Wikipedia: I don’t like Mondays]

One can only wonder how a life so bereft of love and the appreciation of goodness would think that senselessly taking innocent lives can be anything to contemplate.

She has been in prison since 1979 and her next parole hearing in 2025 is unlikely to give her any reason to like or dislike Mondays or any other day for that matter. How you rise for the day can quite easily define the rest of your life. [Wikipedia: Cleveland Elementary School shooting (San Diego)]

The cherished American toleration of daily tragedies

Just imagine, we are 45 years after that school shooting spree, and we still have these tragedies happening with such regularity in the United States of America like an incurable madness. To give this some perspective, it appears the first recorded school shooting was in 1764.

You might be forgiven for thinking it is a cherished American tradition, the way these tragedies are tolerated for the sake of the right to bear arms. There have been three school shootings in September 2024, alone. [Wikipedia: List of school shootings in the United States (2000–present), List of school shootings in the United States (before 2000)]

Arise, Shine

To conclude on the thinking that helped in writing this blog, I had an inward witness within that took me to this verse in Scripture. “Arise, shine; For your light has come! And the glory of the LORD is risen upon you.” [Bible Hub: Isaiah 60:1 (NKJV)]

There is a glow that comes with the blessing of a new day, you can be the light of it, the sunshine that makes everyone happy, the beauty that gives it meaning, and the memory that makes you full of gratitude. That is why each day is wonderful because as the glory of the Lord rises upon me, I rise to shine and give light to the joy of a new day.

Pour the wine and don't you whine

Fill the glass, I say

I am neither a glass half full nor glass half empty person because it has no context. As I have written before, I need to know what is in the glass, whether it is tasty or poisonous, and either way, it must be something I want to drink. For instance, if the glass is filled with good wine, I would suppose my glass would be empty or half empty, because I have downed the wine.

Then, I am reminded of one wine estate we visited in the Cape Winelands of South Africa, none of the wine we were given to taste passed the muster, we poured it away, not into the spittoon, but as an inadvertent libation to the trees behind us, wetting the roots for the occasion of woodland inebriation. Though you can never tell if a tree swaying in the wind is pissed, pissed off, or pissing happy.

Every good thing to see

However, if I have a disposition, it is generally to find opportunity and possibility, this with an element of assessing the risk-reward situation so issues can be anticipated for. What I cannot appreciate to any extent is negativity, a totally pessimistic view pretending to a form of realism that is the better part of horror, terror, and a predilection to the foreboding.

Sometimes, it is just a total lack of facility and with it comes the inability to take any advantage even when it literally slaps them in the face screaming, I am here for the taking. Obviously, one should not make a judgement on singular events. Yet, any singular event can be defining, your spirit finds and gives your mouth the words you speak and the outlook you have.

Add it to your experience

If you train yourself on the hopeless, it is unlikely that any hope would feature in how you review a situation. Rather what you have in store is a big bag of excuses, every doorway opened for you to escape from the prison of your acquaintance with everything bad is shut by one; your comfort in the place and then; an unwillingness to leave the place.

I want to believe I am always in motion living through all sorts of experiences that I have determined would be positive regardless of the circumstance. I make the best of the situation and I am both educated and educating. Places where I would never have imagined I would be have given perspective to the privileges I have enjoyed in life and I am full of gratitude that the experience is fulfilling. 

Thought Picnic: Deny bad strangers a hold on you

They do not know you

In considering the attitude of some people to others, I found myself thinking about how we could allow complete strangers to influence how we think about ourselves to the point of dejection that we become unhappy about ourselves.

Be careful not to rate the approval and approbation of strangers over the acceptance and love of those you know. A fleeting rejection should never define your self-worth or your existence. That you have not been liked at a point in time is just an episode that quickly passes on, not to be agonised over.

Let strangers be insignificant

Usually, that situation is a factor of them speaking more to their limited sense of appreciation than of you and who you are. Knowing this will give you peace and a sense of perspective, for strangers are just that, strangers. Until someone gets to know you, they don't know you. Even if it is lasting, their first impression is just theirs alone.

You may never encounter that stranger again, so, why let them dwell in your memory and experience? Obviously, how they made you feel or treated you might be bad, unfair, and unkind, but they make up an insignificant proportion of your existence, and do not give them a platform where they should never even have a toe hold.