Fragrant smoke wafted from the backyard grill like incense. It filled the air with anticipation as we arrived at our friends’ home to celebrate America’s birthday on the Fourth of July.
Holidays, especially in the summer, are a time to break away from routines and drink deeply of the sweet nectar of life. If you are fortunate to have a few good friends, you are blessed in many ways. Love, laughter, and connection allow light to enter the soul like a camera’s shutter opening the aperture, imprinting an image on exposed film. Memories that will last forever. A reminder what is truly important.
We celebrated. I don’t think I was celebrating America’s birthday. That thought was far from my mind. We celebrated… being together. Not in an organized or rehearsed sort of way, but free and spontaneous. The way life happens. Floating in the swimming pool was refreshing on such a hot day. Watching the ladies being tossed in as they protested was amusing. And little girls with big smiles and mispronounced words brightened each moment like a sparkler. Just celebrating.
Great times. Special moments we want to last forever. Moments we didn’t really expect to impress us so much at the time. Like ghosts from the past, memories visit from deep places of our heart in a future time. As John Eldredge wrote when explaining such moments which we wish would last, “Are they not moments of love, moments of joy? Simple moments of rest and quiet when all seems to be well. Something in your heart says, Finally – it has come. This is what I was made for.”
The firepit crackled and flames danced from the logs as we carefully balanced our marshmallows on the end of sticks, trying to achieve the perfect texture of sweet gooeyness. With gentle precision, the fluffy sponge was laid upon a square of chocolate then pressed between two sheets of graham cracker. A sticky sweet mess. There is no clean way to eat smores. To thoroughly enjoy, you must give yourself permission to be a mess. Children have no problem with this and it is the way life should be lived.
Later that evening, in the flickering light of tiki torches, I shared a moment with the woman who has been commited to love and to cherish me these many years. Leaning back in an Adirondack chair on our deck, under a canopy of stars, while our neighbors lit up the sky with fireworks, I became overwhelmed by the love of God. “He made this moment for us,” I heard myself say in a whisper.
I believe God’s love is extravagant. All of creation, and moments of love and laughter reveal His heart toward us. He gave us the ablilty to enjoy pleasure, then He blesses us in many ways. Like divine “text messages”, He sends His love to us throughout our days.
It has been a few months since that One Fine Day. It also has now become another day in what we know as “the good ole days back then”. New memories are created as we travel through time. Each moment unwraps like the Present that it is. Today could be another, One Fine Day.
