Yesterday the March sun was glorious here in the Pacific Northwest. Earlier in the day, I had put my vegetable starts out on the deck out by my old travel trailer so that they could get some sun. Later in the evening, I was preparing some new pots to start lavender when I noticed my little vegetable seedlings were no longer in the sun. I stopped to move them into the remaining golden diagonal daylight, and as I did the old church hymn “Life’s evening sun” popped into my mind and I began humming the refrain:
Life’s evening sun is sinking low,
A few more days, and I must go
To meet the deeds that I have done,
Where there will be no setting sun.
I tried to remember the rest of the lyrics, but only one other line of the song came to me:
While going down life’s weary road,
I’ll try to lift some trav’ler’s load;
I’ll try to turn the night to day,
Make flowers bloom along the way.
There I was, in the evening sun, planting flowers that I hoped would bloom somewhere along the way. I felt a big hug from God and just basked in the beauty for a while.
The truest evidence for God requires faith and sometimes solitude and reflection. Coincidences like that happen more often than we realize. We need faith to be tuned in to them, to experience them. In times of peaceful reflection, such as gardening can bring, we can hear God more clearly. I took the song to mean the obvious, that my life is getting on in years and soon I will “meet the deeds that I have done.” Woe to me if I don’t use my “golden” years fully.
I want to look back over my life and see that the flowers I planted are benefiting those who are still left on this earth, with its sun of freedom threatening to sink into a long dark night. Let us all use our remaining time to turn that night back into day.
The hymn is called “A beautiful life” by William Golden. 1918
RL Martin 