Blue Skies Smiling at Me

New Delhi, Before and After the Shutdown

Blue skies

Smiling at me
Nothing but blue skies
Do I see

Bluebirds
Singing a song
Nothing but bluebirds
All day long

Never saw the sun shining so bright
Never saw things going so right
Noticing the days hurrying by
When you're in love, my how they fly

Blue days
All of them gone
Nothing but blue skies
From now on

There are lots of versions of this song, and you might start with Ella Fitzgerald. move on to Willie Nelson and finish up with Canadian Diana Krall. I might have chosen scripture as the lead in to this blog but I can't recall a single reference to a clear blue sky in either the Hebrew Scriptures or the New Testament. Please enlighten us all if you know of one. There are several references to the dome of the sky in the first chapter of Genesis and the Creation story.

Here's a startling reality of the global shutdown which is a result of COVID-19, a plague of almost biblical proportions. The sky is bluer and clearer than it's been in years, in some places decades, the way God intended it to be, we might suggest. There are lots of before and after photos from Asian countries and the Indian subcontinent showing a stark contrast. In some cities in India the air quality can register 25 times what is considered safe but within days of the mandatory quarantine there levels have dropped below the safe baseline. A city that hasn't seen the Himalayan peaks in 30 years can now seem them clearly. 

The irony is that because billions of people bustled about in vehicles and factories churned away the sky was seldom clear and air quality was poor enough to kill those with compromised lungs. We're told that polluted air probably results in coronavirus sufferers getting sicker and even more likely to die. Now the air is breathable in a lot of places and the sky is blue, but these same people are expected to stay inside where they aren't able to enjoy it.

I' may be just "blue-skying" here, but what if we learned from all this and worked toward a better way of living on the planet? Do you think the Creator would approve? 

Here's Ella:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nB-xqDZbEVQ

                                 Werner's Nomenclature of Colours