What We Can Learn From Sunrises
When I was in elementary school…a looooong time ago, I had a lovely art teacher whose name escapes me (because it was a looooong time ago). In art class, we would put on smocks, which I think is still a very good idea. It signaled that we were about to get into some stuff and be creative. We knew things might get messy and that it would ok! I loved it!
We would learn how to paint, use chalks, colored pencils, watercolors, and acrylics. We made ceramics, painted them, and gosh, we even made ashtrays (which seems like bad messaging for elementary school kids, but we did it).
A few months into the school year, my teacher sent a note home to my mother. It said, “Tracey is very creative and delightful, but…in much of her artwork, she creates the same thing: sunrises. Lots and lots of sunrises. Perhaps you could encourage her to try some different scenes.”
I was 7 years old and obsessed with sunrises. I still am. They never gets old. Even as a little girl, I was drawn to the unique canvas of the sky that appeared before me every day.
It’s funny – 50 years later, if you were to look in my camera roll on my phone, you would see, more than any other thing (except my husband, Gary), sunrises. Lots of them.
It’s not just the colors that fascinate me, it’s the fresh start. I haven’t screwed anything up yet. I have another chance to make a contribution, to make someone feel loved, to go on an adventure. A sunrise is about the most perfect beauty that I’ve ever seen and it points to an Artist who has been inviting us to seek Him from the beginning of time.
So here’s to a new day, a fresh start, an unrivaled beauty that will never be repeated, and an Artist who draws pictures in His sky for us. With every sunrise that He allows me to be here, I will receive that fresh start and be grateful.
Get your fresh start and your new mercies and put your smock on. We’ve got good stuff to do today.
