Tonight I thought a lot about tomatoes. Tomatoes.

I was making the salad tonight, pretty much like any other night. First of all, let me just make it clear how happy I am 'salad' no longer means iceberg lettuce,watery tomatoes and weird croutons drowning in honey mustard just to make it taste. Other than that, there's nothing much exciting about making salad. There I was, cutting up cherry tomatoes and musing over what generally disagreeable things they were. To start, the tomato plants harbor the mother of all Godzilla-like spiders. This alone is enough to persuade me to relinquish tomatoes. And then they taste weird. In spite of all these detractors, God could have made every single tomato the same shade of red.

Really.

If you stop to think about it, there's no reason for tomatoes to be anything other than red. There's no reason for them to have color at all. But as I cut them up and tossed them on the salad, I couldn't help but thank God for color. For the tiny jewels bleeding saffron and the ruby-red half moons cresting over the tops of the romaine leafs, for the sunset coloring that pervaded a dingy cutting board, making it beautiful.

I'm still wondering why I thought so much about a fruit I don't even like.

"Count your blessings" goes the old saying.

Some days blessings are brilliant neon signs in the middle of your life. Most days, though, they're brilliant and tiny tomatoes causing me to give thanks.