Starting Right
Starting Right is a 5 minute Day Starter to help keep you motivated, encouraged, and focused throughout your day. DannyMac is a pastor, teacher, motivational speaker, husband, and father. His years of leading and training people have given him vast experience in helping individuals to accomplish change in their lives and meet their goals. He can help you set the course for your day by offering practical advice from God's Word in a positive and fun way. There is no better way to begin your day than by Starting Right with DannyMac.
Starting Right
Beach Joy, Soul Peace
A child’s squeal over a seashell can reset an entire morning. We head to the shoreline, where two kids on a treasure hunt turn colored glass and broken shells into priceless finds—and their delight becomes a mirror for the way we handle stress, routine, and the weight of daily life. Living by the ocean should make awe easy, yet familiarity can numb our senses. This short, reflective journey explores how reclaiming wonder clears mental clutter and restores peace.
You’ll come away with simple practices for noticing the good where you are: short walks before screens, naming three sensory details, keeping a “treasure list,” pairing scripture with a view. These small rituals train attention, anchor faith, and help us carry peace into hard days. If you’ve been feeling crowded by noise, deadlines, and low-grade anxiety, this five-minute reset will help you start right—eyes open, heart steady, and soul ready to meet the day.
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Good morning and welcome to Starting Right. I am Danny Mack, and I'm going to be here every Monday to Friday to help you get a great start to your day. So grab your cup of coffee, sit back and relax for the next five minutes as I help you start your day by starting right. I am very fortunate in that I live in a place that is absolutely beautiful, and I can walk out the door of my house, and within ten minutes, I can be at the ocean beach. It is just so great to be able to do that. And because we're so close, we wind up spending a lot of time down there at the beach, and I enjoy it because we've seen everything from the fish jumping to seals chasing the fish to dolphins and killer whales. It's an absolutely incredible, beautiful place to live and wonderful to be able to be here and to see it. But I'm thinking right now about a visit I made to the beach within the last couple weeks. I I went down to my regular spot to do some reading. It was a fairly nice day. And as I was sitting there on the rock overlooking the ocean and reading my book, I saw this young mother come along with a couple of her children. I would guess that her kids were something like four and six years old. What caught my attention, actually, was the absolute unrestrained excitement that these two children had. They weren't just walking along the beach, they were on a treasure hunt. They were discovering things that to them were absolutely amazing. They were collecting colored rocks and pieces of shells and pieces of colorful beach glass, and they were just having a blast as every discovery they made was like finding buried treasure to them. They would squeal with delight, they would pick it up, and they would go running back to show their mother what they had found. At first I I tried to keep reading, but I soon had to stop and just watch what these kids were doing. I smiled and absolutely enjoyed watching these kids on their process of discovery. And their mom, she was great. She was absolutely fantastic with these kids. She was smiling and laughing with them, marveling at their discoveries and encouraging them to go and find some more treasure. She had with her two small plastic bags and she collected everything they found and placed them into these bags for these kids to take with them and to look at again later on. Who knows? Maybe they had a greater collection at home of things that they were looking at and were enjoying. This process was repeated over and over as they walked down the beach. The children running a little bit ahead of their mom, discovering something, a cry of delight, and then bringing back this piece of broken shell or stone, and she would store it for them in this bag. The joy was absolutely infectious. And I felt that joy too as I watched and I listened to them. I really liked one of the young boys. He was particularly excited with each new find. He would find a rock or a piece of shell, and he'd run back to mom with it, and he would explain to her all the intricacies of how beautiful this piece was. He would show her the shell and he would tell her, Look, Mom, the edges are like this, and look how it's curved here, and look at this piece here, Mom. Oh, it must have been from something special. And everything that he found, he described as something special. Each rock was this beautiful treasure. Each piece of shell came from a fantastic ocean creature. To him, everything he found told a story, and he was so excited and wanted to tell his mother all about it. As I thought about this experience afterwards, I realized that even though I live in this beautiful place, I sometimes take it for granted. I went down to the beach to read, but in all reality, my mind was on a lot of the pressures and a lot of the problems that we're dealing with and that we're going through. There were a lot of those small things that the children were excited about that I wasn't particularly excited about at first. And I began to realize that when I take God's creation for granted and I I don't see how wonderful it is, that something happens, that there is a a door that I open up within myself that lets all of the other things that are not so wonderful and beautiful and exciting in this world, I let those things come and start to take prominence in my mind. I I worry about all kinds of things. And then those worries and those burdens, they not only are in my mind, they actually start to, you know, sort of invade my soul, and I begin to feel overwhelmed. Isaiah chapter 42 and verse 5 describes the Lord God this way: the creator of the heavens, who stretches them out, who spreads out the earth with all that springs from it, who gives breath to all its people and life to those who walk on it. God's creation is all around us. Whether it's what we discover in nature, or maybe we need a child to come along and to show us that marvelous beauty that we were too distracted or too busy to see. You know, right now I think we all need to take time to stop and notice the beautiful things around us. Notice what God has given us, what our Creator has done for us. Fill ourselves up with the joy and the beauty of where we live and what God has given to you right where you are. Knowing that God has blessed us with the beauty of His creation, which can help to bring us peace and encouragement as we face the struggles and trials we do every day. Have a great day, my friends. We'll talk to you again tomorrow. Thank you for listening today. And I invite you to join me Monday to Friday right here on Starting Right with Danny Mack.
