The Memory Keeper . . .

It was the sun, the golden light coating the trees outside in the drive that drew me, telling me there was a beautiful sunset tonight. It was some family person calling me from the locked away hermitage of my room to put away the last few supper dishes. Otherwise, I never would have seen.

When there's light turning leaves to pure gold something stirs . . . 

And you know you've been given some celestial gift.

The wheat is barely golden in June, but in this light its given the gift of foresight--of all it could become, of all those little grains have dreamed they would be. From tiny seeds to stalks reaching for the gold in the sky.

And I wonder if they're glad. Glad they know what they're for when they've become what they were meant to be. We're all to live for a greater glory.

 So I race outside,Toi in my hand, to catch it, this memory all golden. Summer parting the folds of spring, sunburns and flip-flops, in the midst of house fixing, mowing lawns, dishes in the sink, trips to town, money to buy the needed things, in the middle of all this---the world stops.

 The sky clouds, but those blue mists of water only gather to grasp this good gold light pouring, bits of heaven's streets shining through a mercy hole in God's carpets.

Then the clouds, they fly away. Holding tight to this bit of goodness and mercy. This one little piece of heaven midst a mad, mad, mad world, until the morrow comes. Until new mercies grow out of the new sunrise on a new day.

I sit down in the gravel as God closes His curtains for a night. Not to shut the world out, but to draw us toward the light we know is there. Slowly, so slow, He closes it and the sun goes out, leaving behind the streaks the clouds stole away.

They're only here a moment, these sunsets we have. One every night. Gone. A memory. So quick and beautiful, as all the things we are supposed to love. Love is constant, as is evil. Yet so easy is evil to see rather than love.

And then I wonder . . .
How many sunsets have I missed? How many golden moments have passed by unnoticed because I never bothered to look for them? How many happy times have I passed up to remain with this sad and evil being? Now I long for those moments. Why now? When they're gone and I've realized all I've lost?

I catch a glimpse of Louie in the window on my way home, me all golden-eyed with the sunset. He watches the world as it, unbeknownst to him, turns round and round before his eyes. I snap his picture. I don't know why. I like cats in windows. They say things to me, even though sometimes they don't have words.

What do cats say anyway?

I ask Him, "Lord, don't let me just watch this world turn, with all it's evil tidings, let me turn with it. Through all its golden sunsets, storming every black evil, past cats in windows, and babies murdered, by broken homes because they lacked You, and brushing my fingers over dew covered grass. Let me turn with the world heartbroken, but hopeful . . .

"Because no matter how many dark things I choose to see over all these beautiful sunsets,no matter how many boys run away to make love with other boys, no matter how many girls seek love and satisfaction in the wrong arms because their daddies weren't there for them, no matter how many times my impatience and frustration weedle through.

No matter how many young children are suffering in human trafficking, no matter how many people die in car wrecks, no matter how many teenagers drown themselves and throw their lives away because they think they're beyond saving, no matter how many times I get angry and yell, no matter many soldiers die fighting or lie suffering in a prison camp, no matter what . . ."

The sound comes. It's silence. But there are words. The words I keep saying to my friend when we talk about the bad stuff and how we can't fix it. The words she keeps saying back to me because she knows I need to hear them most of all---

"God, You, are still good."

God is still good. 

It might not be what you expect from a cat. It might not be the words you think they might say while sitting in the window, carefree. 

It might not be the reason you think there's a golden pocket of sunlight setting over the hills tonight. But it's why they're there. 

God is still good. 

What a memory . . . I hope I have this memory again and again and again . . .