Saturday evening I decide to go and find something of beauty to photograph.  I leave the house at about 3:30 and just drive.  I keep driving and waiting for some something to reach out and grab me; but sadly nothing does, and so I just continue driving.  Mile after mile passes and the light of day is slowly being drawn from my skies.  I begin to get discouraged as I realize that soon the darkness will overtake me.  I almost give up hope of finding something unusual to photograph when I tell myself, if I cannot find something extraordinary, then I shall look at the ordinary in an unusual way.

          I pass through Piedmont, then Centre, and suddenly I begin to notice something odd.  The closer I get to Weiss Lake, the more stunning the sky is becoming.  A normal day, gradually developing into just another average night; then the unexpected happened, my ordinary day proved to be a hidden treasure.  What I had silently scorned as a wasted evening minutes before now was demonstrating just how wrong I was.  As the sun dipped below the Alabama horizon it lit a fire in the sky and totally consumed my ordinary day.

          I had thought I was going to have to settle for a common run of the mill sunset when out of the blue I was handed a gorgeous gift to unwrap.  Is that not the case so many times?  We look at what we think is just another ordinary day and stop searching for the hidden treasures of love and friendship scattered all around us.  Just another normal day and unrealized by us we have unwrapped gifts laying at our feet.

          When Christmas comes, we look for the gifts that have our names written on the box.  Sometimes we will even look under the bed, in the closet and search diligently for the gifts we expect to be for us.  Should we not do the same thing in our ordinary days?  Perhaps that is what really transforms an ordinary day into a holiday; looking, searching and expecting to unwrap for the hidden treasures in our ordinary days.  You just might find what you look for.  Give it a try, what have you got to lose?

Something to think about:

• Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are. Let me learn from you, love you, savor you, bless you before you depart. Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow. Let me hold you while I may for it will not always be so. One day I shall dig my nails into the earth, or bury my face in the pillow, or stretch myself taut, or raise my hands to the sky, and want, more than all the world, your return.

• Every ordinary day given to God and touched by God is a special day.

• Some of us can only hear God in the thunder of revivals or in public worship; we have to learn to listen to God’s voice in the ordinary circumstances of life.

• Could we with ink the ocean fill,
  And were the skies of parchment made,
  Were every stalk on earth a quill,
  And every man a scribe by trade,
  To write the love of God above
  Would drain the ocean dry,
  Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
  Though stretch’d from sky to sky.

• Nothing is ordinary if you know how to use it.

Your ordinary friend
Rickey Moore