Out my kitchen window this morning the sun is just starting to come up. It’s going to be a pretty sunrise this morning. A swath of clouds stretches across the sky … perfect for catching the colors of the rising sun and turning the sky into a brilliant display of purples and pinks!
I’m tempted to just stand at my kitchen sink and watch the beauty of the sunrise. But my attention is drawn to the pile of dirty dishes on the counter next to the sink. Each morning the dirty dishes are there … each morning it is a different variety of dirty dishes.
This morning there is the blender from where I made smoothies for dinner the night before. A mug, a few plastic storage containers, a measuring cup, a few spoons. The work from yesterday is evidenced in the pile of dirty dishes next to the sink each morning. Today is a new day. I need to wash those dishes so that I can use them to do new things today.
This is like my life. Each morning I get up and there is a pile of leftover “dirty dishes” from all the work I did yesterday serving God. Today is a new day. Just as the sunrise each morning is new and completely different than any other sunrise … so also today is new … a gift from God … filled with completely new opportunities to serve Him!
The items I have in my kitchen are completely different from the items someone else has in their kitchen. Therefore, the array of dirty dishes I have sitting on my counter each morning is completely different than the array of dirty dishes someone else has sitting on their kitchen counter each morning.
In the same way, God has “stocked” each person’s life with completely different things. Our backgrounds are all different, our formative experiences are completely different, our views on the world are completely different, where we live is completely different, our talents and gifts and abilities are completely different.
And each day, each one of us gets up and the things which we used to serve God yesterday are sitting there like a pile of dirty dishes next to the sink. It’s a new day. God has given us a brand-new day with a fresh start.
The sky comes alive with color out our kitchen windows, as God takes those “dirty dishes” from yesterday’s work and cleans them up and puts them back in their places (this would be our time of meeting with God each morning! and reading His Word!) … so that those items of our life might be pulled out again throughout this new day to be used once again, in yet another new and different way, to serve Him.
Today’s Gratitude Challenge: What is something in nature you are grateful for?
Sunrises! Definitely sunrises … because they are new and completely different every morning … just like God’s gift of life given to us each new morning.
God’s mercies are new every morning. Great is His faithfulness!
– Lamentations 3:22-23
Thank you God for your gift of sunrises … always new and completely different each morning!
Thank you God for giving us a fresh new start each morning … with completely new opportunities to serve you!
