I got up at 2 A.M. to make one of my frequent business trips to Southwest Kansas.

There was no moon and the night was dark. I lifted my eyes toward heaven and saw millions of stars like eyes looking down on me and I thought. "O God, it's good to be alive".

I stopped at a roadside trash barrel just as daylight was breaking over the rolling hills of the Panhandle of Texas. I stood for a long time looking eastward across a broad valley to the distant hills on the other side. I was trying to absorb all this beauty and store it in my memory bank, when I caught some movement out of the corner of my eye. I turned to look and saw four antelope nearby. It was not night but it was not yet day but in this nether land they grazed unperturbed by my presences and I thought, "O God, it's good to be alive".

It was about noon that same day and my business was completed and I was returning home. I stopped in Perryington, Texas and as I stepped from my truck, I felt the rays of the sun hit my face. These were the same rays of the sun that only hours before had thrilled my heart as I witnessed them slowly but steadily inching themselves out of the darkness of the night to bring us the brightness of the day. But what in the beginning had been soft pink rays were now transformed into brilliant golden rays bringing warmth to the earth. I lifted my eyes to the source of warmth and saw a beautiful bright ball of light in the sky. As I stood there transfixed, I felt the cool winds of heaven as they brought coolness to the heat of the day and I thought, "O God, it is good to be alive".

Shortly before dusk, I arrived back home and as I pulled into the driveway, I could see my beautiful wife and best friend for more than 40 years milking her goats to get milk for her bottle babies and I stopped and watched and my mind wandered back to the first time I ever laid eyes on her standing in the doorway of a little Baptist Church on a Wednesday night. She quickly stole my heart and my life and I thought, "O God, it is so good to be alive".