A Word of Encouragement with Elizabeth Rice Handford
Schatzi: Chicago? A beautiful day? And rain? When I let Schatzi out the other morning, I said, “Schatzi, it’s a beautiful day in Chicago.” My long-haired dachshund looked up in surprise. This was the Carolinas, not
Chicago. And it was raining buckets of really wet, wet water. Chicago? Beautiful morning? And rain? Schatzi sniffed and crept back inside.
I often greet the day with “It’s a beautiful day in Chicago.” You might wonder why, unless you grew up in Chicago in the ’30’s and ’40’s.
At the height of the depression, fifteen million people were unemployed; millions more working at starvation wages. War lowered over us and became an awful reality in 1941. (I can remember coming home in the car from Chicago one night, when air-raid sirens wailed. Daddy pulled off the road, turned off the lights, and we waited anxiously for the all-clear signal. We never knew whether enemy planes had lurked overhead that dark night.)
In the early ’20’s Everett Mitchell was a young man living in Chicago. He was a devout Christian. He had a sweet voice, and he sang in churches or wherever he was given the opportunity. He was hired by a radio station to sing for them. Within six months he was the station manager. When NBC bought the station, Mitchell hosted a morning program called “The National Farm and Home Hour.”
One morning Mitchell was on the train going in to work. He described the journey. “A fellow on the train complained about the weather and hard times. ‘As far as this nation is concerned,’ he said, ‘we’re doomed. God has forsaken us.’
“I said, ‘No, we’ve forsaken God to worship the almighty dollar.’ So that morning when I got to the broadcast, I said, though it wasn’t in the script, ‘It’s a beautiful day in Chicago! It’s a great day to be alive, and I hope it’s even more beautiful wherever you are.’ ”
It became Mitchell’s signature greeting on his daily radio broadcast. And the thousands of people who listened to him every morning were heartened and comforted in those dark days, as I was. Because of the war, all broadcasting of weather information was strictly forbidden. But the President himself gave Mitchell specific instructions to keep saying, “It’s a beautiful day in Chicago.”
And it is a beautiful day in Greenville today.
A health professional once asked me, following Medicare guidelines to see if I might be depressed, “Is your glass half empty or half full?”
Without stopping to think I answered, “Neither! My glass is full and running over.” Why? Because it’s a beautiful day in Chicago! Why? Because I am a child of God, and God gave us this day to love Him and enjoy Him. Why? Because God is in control of this day, rain or arctic cold or Sahara heat.
This is the day the LORD has made;
We will rejoice and be glad in it. . . .
Oh, give thanks to the LORD, for He is good!
For His mercy endures forever. Psalm 118:24,29 nkjv
Oh, yes, it’s a beautiful day in Chicago, and Greenville, and Shanghai and Timbukto and St. Petersberg and the Fiji Islands, all because God Himself fashioned it in love specifically for us to enjoy!