I found this post buried deep in the "edit posts" section of my blog dashboard. I wrote this on one of those days when you could just feel the Creator at work, when everything from the curling pages of my literature book to the dirt on a pair of shoes held a sort of unimaginable wonder that sends shivers of joy tickling down your arms.
I hope you have days like that, too. I hope you are trying, (as I am trying) to see God everywhere... Everything He has made has some reflection of His goodness and truth and beauty...
I normally don't post my random musings on this blog. Normally I post about art and craft projects. But you can't do anything creative without inspiration.
And so, since I've nothing else to post today, you get a random musing from yours truly. _____________________
(Okay, this post is one of the dangerous things that simply makes no sense. It's one of those thoughts, like an image, that are bright and beautiful in your mind but are the dullest, plainest things when put onto paper.)
I'm an artist. (Obviously.) I love shapes and color... I've often thought that they are some of God's greatest gifts.
Color. I simply love it. Blues you can swim in. Reds you can taste. Browns that smell like fresh-cut wood or brownies. Of course, color isn't really like that. But how can you explain the absolute beauty of color? The richness which you can drown in or fly in or simply stare at for ages... Rainbows of light, dancing across your vision... It is so strange, that colors are so tangible?
And shapes. I've been known to stare at random things, committing them to memory. There was once a picture book of Heidi in my grandmother's house, and when I was just five or six I would spend hours at night (being far too full of soda to sleep), admiring the clean lines and the messy lines and the squares and circles and colors and shapes...
I recently found that book after several years. I knew every page. I knew the colors... and I knew the story. Is that weird? Is it strange that the things I remember most about our vacation is one moment when I opened my eyes in the salty water and saw the light swirling in a rainbow under the surface of the ocean?
What never ceases to amaze me is how God made shapes and colors... and makes them real. Is that so strange, too? Let me explain. Ever since I was little, I've trained myself to dissect what I see into shapes and colors. Kind of like that Tanagram game (though I am never any good at Tanagram). I see a box, but it is also a cube. And a cube is made of squares. Squares are made of exquisite straight lines. And the colors on the box... Each a world in and of it's own. So it is that lines and colors and squares and cubes form a box-- and what a box! A box is a box! How miraculous!
(Honestly, try to stay with me. Boxes are boxes and that is a miracle. And THAT is a fact.)It's like science, just a little bit. Protons, neutrons, electrons, and forces make an atom... an atom makes a molecule... Zoom out so far that it makes your head spin, and you see a
person. A living, breathing person made in the image and likeness of God. Zoom out farther. There are more. Zoom out farther. There is a whole universe. Zoom back in... who knows how far God has zoomed? And what the real miracles is (aside from the fact that any of this exists) is the fact that all this makes a
world. A world to honor God.
Where am I going with this again?
(You'd better get the computer to always rebel against me when I get into my musing mode. Then you won't get strange, rambling posts that aren't anything like the beauty that was bouncing around in my brain. Just like art, you know. It never turns out the way you wanted.)Everything is such a miracle. Especially colors and shapes that combine to make a visual world so beautiful that it simply amazes.
Here's a fun exercise to try. You've seen your house a million times. Look at it again. Zoom in. See the indiviual shapes. The colors. The fact that that bush looks an awful lot like a sleeping cat. Really look. Really think.
Now look at your house again.
It is a house. Isn't that the most amazing thing in the world? And, even more than that, it is a house that is a home. It's more than a house; it's a place with memories.
If you look at a thing 999 times, you are perfectly safe; if you look at it for the 1000th time, you are in danger of seeing it for the first time.
~G. K. Chesterton
Wonder. Why don't we have wonder in the ordinary things? The guy I just quoted, G.K. Chesterton, wanted the world the re-awaken wonder.
We've become dull in our thinking, and forgotten that every thing we know and everything we will ever know is a miracle beyond comprehension.
Take just a moment, right now. Look at your computer monitor. (Or ipod. Or whatever you happen to be reading this blog on.) Look at its shape. Look at its color. Choose a color and stare at it and wonder. Think about what all goes into a computer. How many thousands of atoms? How does it all work? Wonder.
Art is, to me, simply observing the miracles God has given us. And that is a perfectly legitimate way of glorifying God, isn't it?
