Order from Chaos

Rofl… Confession: I’ve been accused in my life, of “Spiritual Hyperactivity Disorder”, and I don’t deny it at all. But I have to love a God who can not only “keep up with it”, but is always ahead of me! Another commentator’s blog post, “Getting Started” by Don Merritt, used a marvelous illustration of the coming year as a “blank canvas”, upon which God allows us to paint our coming year. Looking at this post again, and the comments made about his “canvas” illustration, I was flashed back to a memory from my extremely young childhood…

Before I could write or draw or even color, I used to love playing a game with my father.

I would get a pencil or pen and a clean sheet of paper… and I would scribble. Just those large loops, and little squiggles that small children make when faced with a clean surface and a writing implement. I would then run my masterpiece to my father, crying… “Look what I drew, Daddy!”

He would take the work, examine it carefully, and “edit” it… filling in some of the “mosaic tiles” that result from random scribbles, shading others, reinforcing some lines… and he would make an actual “Picture” out of it… A dog, a house, a plane, a tree, a fish, or an entire scene. It was like magic. (He was a scary-smart guy, and it had to do with how his brain worked that he could ALWAYS see patterns in what appeared utterly random!)

But to my little ham-fisted self of the time, I could just go “Wow!” as I watched him bring forth order from my personal chaos.

When he was done, he’d always just hand the picture back to me, saying, “You drew that. You just didn’t see it yet. You’ll learn, though. All you have to do is see it. And until you do, I can help. Well done, Little Monk.”

I think God’s still doing that with me… maybe with all of us?

Blessings and grace to thee, Gentle Reader!