This is the Day

By Lynn Hood

As I lay in bed, drifting out of sleep and into the day, I began thinking of all the things I needed to do. The worries of the day, the week, the year, began to pile up. It felt overwhelming, as though I was lying underneath so many blankets that I couldn’t move or even breathe.

And then a phrase from the Sunday service popped into my head: “Today is the day the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it.”

I started saying this phrase a few months ago, and it’s not too hard to remember when you are watching a gorgeous sunrise or looking at your family. But it had slipped from my mind until this morning.

I lay there in bed, looking out of the window as that phrase went through my head. A black-headed nuthatch – one of my favorite birds – landed on the tree a few feet away. Then a host of birds arose from the feeder below the window and landed in the trees.

That was the word that instantly occurred to me: a host. A red-bellied woodpecker arrived, his head resplendently red even on a gray day. And indeed, they were holy.

And so the day began, a day the Lord had made. Regardless of the problems trying to weigh me down, I will rejoice and be glad in it.