An Autumn Art Show

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb.  I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.  Psalm 139:13-14

A few mornings ago my youngest headed out the door, having won the award for being first to be ready for the school day.  A few moments later he popped his head back in the house.  "Mom!" he called with a breathless voice.  "Just wait till you see.  You're going to love this!"

I was ready for a pleasant

surprise when I left the house.  At first I didn't see anything remarkable - just another lovely October day.  He paused to let me look for myself, and then flung his arm toward the ground in a gesture of magnificence.

"Leaves," he grinned.  "They're finally coming down."

He was right.  The autumn beauty that had been brewing in the treetops was starting its annual migration to the ground.  Leaves from our shade tree lay carpeting the yard in an orange and gold shag.

A dry skittering drew my attention toward a few lighthearted leaves strolling across the driveway, enjoying the sunshine.  I watched them, intrigued by the warm marbling on their backs – red and orange and yellow and a touch of green sponge-painted in muted celebration, a modest masterpiece. 

My eyes trailed around the yard, noting the different shapes, sizes, and abundance of color amongst the leaves, each canvas more striking than the last.  Their beauty was astonishing, once I took the time to notice it.  They were truly, spectacularly beautiful.

It had never occurred to me before to be envious of a leaf. 

Wouldn’t you like to be spectacularly beautiful?  What joy it would be, if leaves could feel joy, to reflect up to each passerby a little of the Creator’s glory, to make people stop in their tracks and say, “Wow, what a wonderful creation.”  How glorious to glow with color and light and the knowledge of being a real, unique and splendid work of art.

Here’s something to think about:  you are, truly, a masterpiece.

“I am fearfully and wonderfully made,” the psalmist writes.  God’s works are indeed wonderful – we know that full well.  All creation sings His praise and shows His glory.  Hummingbirds and giraffes and spring flowers and autumn leaves all gleam with the greatness of our God. 

And we, you and me, are His greatest creation – mankind, made in His own image.  We are wonderfully made.  We are spectacular.

We can be pretty bad at seeing our own wonderfulness.  We look down at our imperfect, slightly lumpy bodies and say, “Wonderfully made?  This?”  We see our own mistakes, our failures, our weaknesses and flaws and think, “Wonderful?  Me??”

Yes!  Wonderful, you.  Not wonderful because you’re pretty, or well dressed, or because your house is clean and your kids are well behaved.  You’re not wonderful because you’re nice, or even because you go to church and say your prayers and help wash the dishes after the church potluck.  You’re wonderful because God’s works are wonderful.  He made you, and what He makes is good.

And you’re wonderful because not only were you wonderfully created, but you have also been wonderfully re-created.  Through the blood of His Son, God cleaned away the ugliness of sin that marred His masterpiece.  And now when He looks at you He sees you as the beautiful, wonderful creation He intended you to be.

Because Jesus lived and died and rose again, you – lumpy, imperfect you – are wonderful in the eyes of your creator.  With His love within us and His forgiveness around us, we are freed to be a spectacular leaf, a unique and uniquely gifted masterpiece who reflects the beauty of our maker and gives a glimpse of His love to those around us. 

Before long we'll have to rake our front yard leaves into good-smelling piles and take them to the town yard waste pile for the next stage of their life.  I will revel in the feeling of their cool, damp crispness against my arms and face as I herd them into a bag for the journey.

But for now I will enjoy my daily stroll through our golden carpet, swooshing my feet under the leaves and then up for that deliciously crinkly sound as they surge upward and then settle back down in my wake. And my eyes will trail over the God-painted beauty all around me, realizing once again that there is no most-beautiful leaf.  They are all lovely. 

I am only one among so, so many.  But the One who made me sees me as beautiful.  For today, that is enough.

First published in The Alpena News on October 22, 2016.

Making Plans

“I’m kinda nervous I’ll break my nose one of these times. Other than that, it’s fine.”

Last fall my teenager daughter declared that her room needed a loft bed. A trip to Home Depot and a weekend later, we found ourselves in her bedroom smelling of sawdust as we followed the penciled plan we’d sketched on a scrap of paper.

I have to say, we girls built a pretty nice little loft bed, complete with built-in bookshelves and only a smidge of wobble.

But…well, we ran out of time that day. And got busy the next. And, well...we never quite got around to building a ladder.

My daughter, who is patience personified when it comes to her mother, climbs into her up-in-the-air bed each night using a short stepstool. She balances on the top step, grabs the edge of the bed, then launches herself up onto the mattress. It works, but she often lands, yes, directly on her nose. Other than that, she assures me sweetly, it’s fine.

Fast forward past a busy year to early June. In our usual beginning-of-summer family meeting, I declared it The Summer of Mom. Such a list I had brought to the table! A master to-do list of all the things we were going to accomplish before school started. Back-yard fires and marshmallows. Massive cleaning projects in the basement. Tie-dying on the back porch. And, by golly, I WAS going to build that ladder. It was all part of the plan, and it was all going to get done.

Want to guess what I didn’t accomplish over the summer?

No tie-dying. No basement purges. And no ladder for my poor nose-smushed daughter.

I reeely, reeeely intended to get that ladder built. That was the plan. But plans...well, they just don't seem to go as planned.

Life is like that, I reckon.

A carefully rehearsed argument refuses to go as scripted.

You plan the perfect vacation, and it rains every single day.

A phone call, a construction zone, a child's cough, and just like that a pre-planned day can be thrown completely off course.  

Many are the plans in a man’s heart. But it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.  Proverbs 19:21

Oh, how we plan. Out of our worries and our enthusiasms come days and days and days full of plans, plans that simply will not go as planned.

Except for one. The one we don't make for ourselves.

God's a really good planner. I think maybe that's because He keeps it simple.

It's tempting to think of God's plan as being really big and complicated, encompassing every move of our day in a flurry of divine micromanagement. But while God's plan may be big, it's not complicated. It is a very simple plan, and it has been His plan since the beginning of time. And what is that plan?

To love us. And to make us His.

Throughout the entire Bible and up to this very minute, everything God has done has been in service to this simple, beautiful plan. Old Testament rules and manna in the wilderness. A cross on a hill, an empty tomb. The ins and outs and good days and tough days we are allowed to face...all part of that simple, simple plan.

I am struck by the beauty of that simplicity. And the strength of it. God's enduring focus on doing whatever it takes to guide his obstinate people toward the gifts He wishes to give them makes everything that happens in a day make sense as a part of His big but not complicated plan.

I plan my summers and my vacations and my columns and my arguments to the moment and am absurdly astonished when they go askew. Perhaps I need to take a lesson from God's planning expertise and learn to keep it simple.

The new plan: Be loved. Be His. And love those around me.

There, that's better. That's a plan to lean a day against. When the ladder doesn't get built and I am buried under my to do list and it rains when I want sunshine, things can still go according to plan.

At the end of today, let's look back with a smile at the human-laid plans that just didn't work out. And remember the bigger, simpler plan that was there all along. Whatever the day holds, you are loved. You are His because of Jesus, whoever you may be. And tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that, that big, simple plan will still hold true. You will be loved infinitely by your Creator. You will be wanted by Him, no matter what.

Plan on it.

First published in The Alpena News on September 24, 2016