The air is warm and sweet. Stars burn here and there. In the distance little strands of glitter climb the hills.~Anthony Doerr (From Four Season in Rome)

I almost didn't go. I was out Christmas shopping and running errands. But I was so close, so close to the ocean, the coastline only a few miles away. My mind attempted to talk me out of driving the short distance. "There's the issue of parking, not to mention you'll probably need an app to pay. You don't have time to figure that out." Yet I kept thinking, too, "But I'm so close." 

Only an old blue pick-up sat in the gravel parking lot. I didn't need an app. I typed in my license plate number at the parking meter, slipped in my credit card, and for two dollars I bought an hour to walk along the beach. I felt like I might explode with happiness. I could see a couple of surfers in the distance bobbing in the    silvered waves, like sleek black seals. I walked in solitude, no one else around. It was as if I couldn't gulp down all the beauty surrounding me. The tide was out, and shards of burgundy, amber, bronze and sepia-striped shells lay embedded in the hard-packed sand, like elegant gemstones. A seagull glided above me, winging its way through cirrus clouds, blue slices of sky peering through feathery shapes. I inhaled pungent salty air, listened to the ocean. 

It was the light, though, that I couldn't get enough of. Glittering, dancing, gold-shimmering light that glistened on the water. It was as if that glinting beauty spooled down into the retina of my eye and filled my whole body with its shimmering brilliance. I walked, I ran with joy to be accompanied by that light, holding fragments of pink-hued shells in my sandy fingers. On my way back to the car I noted graffiti written in green paint on a concrete block. "It's Never The Wrong Time." 

As I pulled out of my parking spot, I wondered, for me, what it's never the wrong time for. It was the light. That glorious light. Sunrise, sunset, midday sun, moonlight, starlight. Little strands of glitter climbing the hills.

Then Jesus said, "I am light to the world and those who embrace me will experience life-giving light, and they will never walk in darkness."~John 8:12 (From The Passion Translation)