A Square on the Grid

     Once again, rain has moved in over the mountains with malice aforethought. (We are studying the Civil War and so words Lincoln might have used are creeping in to my blog.) It is slowly disintegrating the snow base on the ski mountain, and the homeschool ski trip I organized for tomorrow is likely being buried in slush. Meanwhile, one of Asherel's good friends has been felled by the flu this week. And then my old friend, Comer, from the Nursing home called to tell me our outing for lunch had to be postponed. Not only was he sick with the flu, but his entire floor of residents has been quarantined. It is apparently a nasty bug with a policy of equal opportunity that preys on  victims indiscriminately: Young and old, rich or poor, wrinkled or smooth.
     I teach my art class today. I am doing a very basic knowledge class on overlaying the subject matter with a grid. Everyone in public school probably is taught to do that- I know I was. But I don't think I have ever taught my homeschoolers to do that. I thought to do it when I saw a spectacular portrait of my sister that her son had done...in lego blocks. He had taken a photograph and made a grid on it, and then used the grid to help him design his unbelievably accurate lego portrait. I hate to use the grid approach myself- it is tedious and mathematical. My brain doesn't easily wrap around either. However, it is highly effective in drawing exact reproductions, and there are times when one wants to do that.

But as I was contemplating the likely cancelled snow day due to rain, and the cancelled lunch outing due to flu, I thought how so often, we only see from the perspective of one square on the entire grid. From our portion of the whole picture, it might seem like the artist has an incomplete, or even faulty vision. It is sometimes nearly impossible to envision the whole from a tiny segment. It won't look like a masterpiece until every grid is filled to be the best segment of the whole that it can be.
    
 As I was wading through lists of kings, and geneologies in the book of 1 and 2Chronicles in the Bible, I could not help my eyes glazing and my interest lagging. But for some reason, each name is in there for a purpose, one I am not always privy to. Each seemingly insignificant unpronounceable name is there because it represents a person who had value and purpose and was one more square on the grid.

I am a square on the grid! The whole picture is not up to me! I only need to be the best square I can be, and I am pretty sure my kids would attest that I am as square as squares come. And today one square is raining, and another square is filled with flu germs. So my square will today be spraying lysol all along its perimeter.

Luke 11: 36
³⁶ Therefore, if your whole body is full of light, and no part of it dark, it will be just as full of light as when a lamp shines its light on you.”

Ephesians 4:16:
¹⁶ From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.