The Sky Outside

I am in Washington DC this morning. The sky outside my hotel had some amazing clouds outside. Simply breathtaking.

I stay at this hotel almost every week because I work three and a half hours from home. I like my work, but the travel, the constant being away from home and the people and places I love is not something I like.

Staying at the same place every week has some advantages though. I've come to know most of the hotel staff pretty well. Now, over a year into my work, I know some of them well enough that we talk about the things friends and neighbors talk about. I hear about their families, their lives and marriages, and sometimes, about their faith.

And then there are the skies. I don't know why, but there is almost always a beautiful sky, something really outstanding and breathtaking, outside my hotel in the mornings. I've taken I don't know how many pictures of the sky from the same parking spot over the year I've been staying here.

Yesterday evening I pulled into the hotel. The night manager, a gentleman from Jamaica, with the most beautiful bass voice, was taking pictures of the hotel for their web site. He was intently checking angles and taking shots in the flattering evening light. I pointed to the sky. "You ought to capture that." I said. He looked up and was amazed at how beautiful. "It's like that nearly every day, particularly in the mornings." I told him. He could not believe it. All that beauty and he never saw it.

God's love is like that. It's there. Right in front of us. All the time. In good times and bad. IF we look up.

I was reading today in Psalms and the thought that struck me was how often David wrote his praises to God, not in good times, but in bad times. It struck me, how David so often saw God at work in those times. So this morning, after seeing the sky, I took some time aside before I drove to the office and prayed deep thanks for the beauty around me, and how it blesses me in bad times. I don't believe beauty like that just happens. I think it's made as surely as you or I were made. For a reason. For us. If we'd bother looking.

Tom