REFLECTIONS
October 30, 2005
 
 
He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn,
the justice of your cause like the noonday sun.
Psalm 37:6
 
 
My Day in the Sun
 
Recently a friend lamented of his life, “I’ve had my day in the sun.” We all have our days in the sun—times of glory when our lives make a difference. November 2, 1939 was such a day for me. Only a few people were present in the room, Dr. Joe Pate, Millie Hamrick, and Mom. I was not a good looking baby in those first moments, but I was to Mom and Millie and they never changed their minds. It was my first day in the sun.
It seemed like a lifetime before it was my day again. This time it was high school graduation. I had done lots of growing and maturing in those years leading up to that moment. I had grown physically, but I had grown experientially. I had successes and failures, joys and sorrows, good times with friends, and fights with classmates. I experienced life, death, and other passages that life brings. But at last it was my day to walk across the stage prepared now to take on the world. It was my day in the sun.
My days at a university ten times the size of my home town were a wonderful adventure; but they were not nearly as wonderful as meeting the love of my life. Janice and I met the first day I was on campus and within two years, my day in the sun was my wedding day. Then a year later, fatherhood brought another day the sun was shining.
Since then there have been other days in the sun—a few places that a difference was made—and many are not so good. But I have been blessed.  From birth I have been loved, privileged to live in a prosperous land, to have had few infirmities, and to have an education that developed a normal intellect. All of these have been God’s gifts to me as He placed me in the earthly role He cast me to play. My days in the sun have been but a grain of sand, but without that grain the world would have been different, however small.
We all have our days in the sun—glory days when we make a mark on life; but unlike my friend, I believe our day in the sun is the day we are living today. How we live from this day forward will make a difference.   Whatever phase of life we are in, God has His light shining on it. Everyday that we live is a day to make a difference; and it will be that way until God calls us home.
 
“You are the light of the world,”
Richard Ì

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