One Fine Day

The weather is beautiful and sunny. The clear water reflects the blue of the sky and the wind gently rustles the trees on the white sandy beach. The hammock that I lay in gently rocks while my right foot drags through the cool sand and grass. The book that I am reading has fallen off my chest and my hat is covering my eyes. I am barely awake. Children are laughing in the water and my wife is laying in the sun trying to coax her burn into a perfect bronze tan. Ah, summer.
Now that it’s gone, do you miss it?

How many people will pass through our lives like those long past summer days? How many times have I ignored someone or simply didn’t take an extra second to notice them, until they were gone? I cringe to think at the countless number of people that I could have, should have, loved with a smile, an open door or with a simple conversation. I ran into a young woman a few weeks ago at a local super-store. I had met her before but I couldn’t remember her name. I thought that she was someone else and I felt awkward. She was selling multi packs of toothbrushes and I wasn’t in the mood for any. With some small talk I went on my way in search of, well, I don’t even remember what was so important. What I totally missed was the purpose for that encounter and more importantly, the person in it.
Being a Monday morning quarterback is easy, isn’t it? All those things in life that we could have done differently, but didn’t are easy to change after the fact, but we can’t.

God could you afford me the grace of being more aware of people because, after all, they are the reason that Jesus came. They are the reason that Jesus suffered that gruesome hell. Yet far too often, like a warm summer breeze, they are gone before you realize and they aren’t coming back anytime soon.