Framing the Day

Being a creature of habit, I awoke and began my usual Monday morning routines.  I fed Ross, started last night's dishes soaking, moved the sprinklers and began watering.  Then I sat down in front of my computer to check the news and to play in all my Scrabble games.  Bryan had made me breakfast, scrambled eggs and toast, and he had left the kitchen with the radio blaring.  I listened to what they call the news these days.  Hurricane Isaac is building up strength.  It may turn out to be just as devastating as Katrina was.  President Obama is ahead by 22 points in the polls if you ask voters who they think cares about them more.  I thought to myself how pointless the news really is, and I sat down by my computer to do a little search for what the real news might be.

It was then that I heard the Lord speak to me with these words, "Be careful how you frame the day."  Framing the day.  "What could that mean?" I wondered.  I thought about what I had done so far.   Did I want to frame my day with upsetting or pointless news stories?  With Scrabble?  With chores?  My feet were painfully sore this morning.  Did I want to frame my day with pain?  How would you frame a day?

Bryan has a gorgeous enlarged photo of Yosemite that he took a few years ago.  He had the photo enlarged and then he had the photo placed in a beautiful frame.  That photo hangs above the couch in the living room.  It is an outstanding photo, but inside that frame it is beyond beautiful.  It is stunning.  Visitors always remark about it, and sometimes they even make remarks about the frame as well as the picture.

I turned away from my computer, turned off the radio and opened my Bible to today's reading in the book of Job.  I thought that perhaps beginning my day with God's words would help to frame the day more beautifully.  "He [G-d] stretches the north over chaos and suspends the earth on nothing.  He binds up the water in his thick clouds, yet no cloud is torn apart by it ... He fixed a circle on the surface of the water, defining the boundary between light and dark...these are but the fringes of his ways; How faint the echo we hear of him."

Even God frames his work, and what we do see of it are just "fringes" of his ways.  "But who is able to grasp the meaning of his thundering power?"  If the fringes of his power and greatness are like faint echoes, then how much more the fulness of God's power?

God took great care to "frame" his creation and to set boundaries around the earth.  Framing can either detract from or add to the beauty of your work.  A frame can take a simple picture and make it beautiful or else a frame can be so ugly that it draws attention away from what is framed.

So today I tried to frame my day with beauty and lovelieness.  Because in the right frame a good day can become outstanding and a bad day can become worthwhile and beautiful.