You are in the midst of the most rare and beautiful days of your life. They’re right here, all around you. Now maybe you’re in a season of chaos or crisis and there seems to be an absence of beauty in your days.. Maybe you’re in a season of change, and it’s not a change you would have orchestrated. Rest assured, these are still rare and beautiful days with priceless moments in abundance.

Summer is here. Have you forgotten the long, cold hard winter? Have you forgotten how you wished for a day you could go outside without freezing your face off? Over Christmas I had my first “freeze your face off” experience. I didn’t know that was a real thing. We spent Christmas in a cabin in South Dakota and the photos will show you our family skating on a frozen pond and sledding down the mountain hillside. What those photos won’t show you is the literal feeling of our faces being frozen off. In that moment there was only one thing I wanted more than a big hot cup of coffee … I wanted summer.

And here it is. It’s so rare and so beautiful. Moments of priceless opportunities are happening. Opportunities you’ve waited all year for. And today you just might miss them. You may forget that you’ve waited so long for this opportunity. And here’s why … life has a funny way of seducing us into believing there will always be time to do it later. There will be some future day when you have more time, more money, more energy and then you will have more fun. You will go and do that thing you’ve been wanting to do. You will spend that day with those people you love. You will create that memory. You will take those photos. You will … but it won’t be today.

We can spend this entire rare and beautiful summer foolishly saying “I will … but it won’t be today.” If not today, then you tell me when. Show me the day on the calendar you’re fully committed to making it happen. If you can’t show me the specific date, then you need to choose one. And I’m here to tell you today, yes this Monday, this rare and beautiful day of life right here in front of you today, has a whole heck of a lot of potential. Why not choose this one?

Will you choose THIS DAY, today, to do something? Something you’ve been saying you will do. Something to commemorate the rarity and the beauty of this day. Don’t let this one pass you by. If you have children at home, show them how to savor a day of life. They’re counting on you to show them how. I grew up with a mama who specialized in making every day worthy of an adventure and a memory. My mama was a factory worker. She left the house before the sun came up and she came home tired. We never had a lot of money. We weren’t counting down to vacation because there was never a vacation … ever. But my mama knew how to savor a day of life. She taught me well.

Ecclesiastes 7:14 says “In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider: God has made the one as well as the other, so that man may not find out anything that will be after him.”

God made this day. This is his masterpiece, here for you to live. This is your life. And today may be labeled as prosperous. Great, be joyful. Or the circumstances of your life in this season may cause you to label it is a day of adversity. And if it is, remember this, God has made this day just as much as he has made your good days and you are still to rejoice and be glad in it. You have a responsibility to show up for even those seemingly bad days and seek those rare and beautiful things. And when you find them, you soak them in. Soak them in all that much more when life is kinda hard to breathe.

Last year at this time my Daddy had just survived a brutal surgery and was in ICU. My mama and I spent days on end in the hospital by his side. They were days of adversity which this scripture warned us of, and right in the middle of those days were these rare and beautiful moments that could have been so easily missed. I bet you know what I’m talking about. I bet you’ve experienced the same.

This scripture says God has made both the days of prosperity and the days of adversity. Why … so that you won’t know what’s coming next. Why is this important? If you know what’s coming next, you may miss what you have today. When you know vacation is coming you fail to enjoy the days before vacation. Those are like wasted days just counting down to what’s ahead. So God gives us both days of prosperity and days of adversity to keep us living in the moment. You don’t know what tomorrow will hold. Heck, you don’t even know if tomorrow will come. BUT YOU HAVE TODAY!

I’m just here to remind you to seek all the things that make this day rare and beautiful.

I have a dear friend who’s marriage recently fell apart. She then lost her job and lost her home. She’s now living in a friend’s house, trying to scrape together enough to make it through for her and her two kids. She messaged me last night and said “these are rare and beautiful days. I will make memories for my family.” If she can do it, and trust me she is, why can’t we? Why can’t you?

This is a call to stop putting your life on hold. This is a call to be glad today. Whatever you have to be happy about, then girl let it rip. Be happy without apology. Hold nothing back in your happiness. Happiness doesn’t save. You can’t pack away today’s unlived and unsavored moments and save them for another day. What’s lost today is lost forever. Use that happiness or lose that happiness. Use this moment or lose this moment. Take the opportunity, or kiss it goodbye.

Here’s your life in this moment, here are these rare and beautiful days which fall far short of perfection with perhaps less that ideal circumstances, and God is just hoping you won’t put your living on hold again.

Let that be your resolve today. God has given me life and I won’t put my living on hold. I will do one thing I’ve been wanting to do, today. I will create an experience worth talking about the rest of the summer. I won’t miss today’s opportunities. I will drop my excuses and I will see this day for what it truly is … rare and beautiful. I will be glad in this day. I will rejoice. I will make memories. I will show up in my life. It will be today.