Hands

Between  these two photos is the timeline of a miracle.

Not a large miracle, because it surely didn't happen the way one imagines the parting of the Red Sea when Moses touched it with his staff, nor is it like having seen the crippled neighbor suddenly rise up walking and leaping at the touch of Jesus.

It is more like wonder that unfolds over a long period of time, as when one savors the first juicy peach that comes from a rough, dry pit planted years ago, or as when one gazes in wonder at the luminescence of a statue carved day after day centuries ago by a master from a large block of what was, in his servant's eyes, quite unremarkable stone.



This little boy who had the ability to say very few words until he was three, and who couldn't make himself understood until much later, is where this timeline begins.

It travels through multiple ear surgeries, years of speech therapy, daily struggles with coping in the classroom, and a diagnosis of autism.


It ends with a man who is now a Master of English Rhetoric, who is pursuing a career in language instruction, and who is able to converse in three other languages.

Only the Sculptor of Heaven, the Tree of Life himself, could see the little boy as he was and know what he would become.

What is your block of granite?

I tell you...anticipate God's artwork and his seasons. The beauty, ultimately breath-taking, is so worth the wait.

Green

If you ask a toddler to do his best work on a page from his coloring book, using your favorite color, he will probably rejoice in finding the right crayon,scribble quickly until a substantial layer of waxy simplicity appears, ignore the lines with high energy, and present you with with art in one elementary shade...with joyful enthusiasm.

But I have learned that a grown-up interaction with the color green, for example, must be aware and opened up to include the huge variety of tints and hues understood through careful observation over time. For example, my children, all artists in their own right, would look at this photograph of the live oak in my back yard and be able to discuss more shades of green than I would see at first, due to their greater talent and extensive work in the discipline.

As a result of discussions like these, I have learned to throw away my crayon box view of "green", embracing the breathtaking wonder of God's immense world of green, some displays of which I will never even have the opportunity to view because of my inability to travel to the remotest parts of the earth in the short time we are all given. I am training myself, however, to concentrate on what is right in front of me, pondering the glory in little things.

I believe we come of age carrying spiritual crayon boxes, if you will. In them we store our easy perceptions of Our Maker, and use them to create two-dimensional representations of The Way Things Are. We do not choose to deeply regard design or its Designer because its supreme diversity demands that we change, and that is too complicated and too painful. But what a great Explainer he is through the Scriptures, and what a Healer he is in our hearts!

Think: If God delights in showing us the diversity of a simple color "green," how great is his joy in showing us all of Himself in all of the little things?

Meditate: "For this people's heart has grown dull, and with their ears they can barely hear, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn, and I would heal them."  Matthew 13:15

Awake

Butterfly Iris
Dietes grandiflora

Morning dew declares that there is freshness in the waking, the blooming into the unknown, the placing of one foot in front of the other toward the uncertain day. My garden whispers in flowers, telling me to look up and open up to what may be; even though they will never be able to reach over the fence, they are praising their Maker. Basting the breeze with song, the birds remind me of the joy that is Providence, even though they will spend the entire day laboring for their most basic needs. And the roly-poly relishes working his dank, dark, dirty soil, doing best what God made him to do.

"Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away, for behold, the winter is past; the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth, and the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. The fig tree ripens its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance. Arise my love, my beautiful one, and come away."  Song of Solomon 2:10-13