Life among the thorns

I got a call asking for a donation for the youth auction to fund a missionary trip they will be going on. Asherel cannot go because it is at the time of Matt's wedding, but every year I donate some art work. I never know if it sells. I don't want to know. If it doesn't sell, I will be depressed, and if it does sell, I might wish I had kept it. It is always a little agonizing, choosing the art to donate.  The artwork I create becomes a piece of me, almost like a child, and it is difficult to part with any of them. I fear I may never be able to draw like that again. So this year, I brought a few old favorites down from the attic and they watched me from their perch against the wall.
"So just like that, you are so willing to sever our relationship?" accused the ocean scene.
"It is not that I want to," I answered, "I  am doing a mitzvah."
"What's that?"
"I understand your confusion, since you see it so rarely from me. It is a good deed, a connection to God, with no hope of reward. You just do it because it is the right thing to do."
"You need more mitzvahs in your life," agreed the ocean scene, "But does it have to be at my expense?"
"Well what else am I going to do with you?"
"Save me for your son and future daughter in law. She seems to have good taste. I'll bet she would be thrilled to hang me on her wall. And what about your future grandchildren? Might they not want to remember when you had talent and produced beautiful things?"

So, in the end, I decided the ocean scene was correct. I instead took an old picture I had done of a rose, and let the Spirit guide my hand as I tried to create something beautiful. I knew the rose itself was somehow not enough. It was not complete.

When I finished it, I leaned it against the wall.
"Are you giving me up to the auction?" asked the rose, as it squirmed on its bed of thorns on the cross.
"Yes, I am afraid I have to. I have run out of time, and so you will have to find a new home among strangers."
"Well that is exactly where I belong!" said the rose, its perky petals blooming.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean you already received my message. After all, you pulled it out of your subconscious to draw me. Now I need to go bless someone else."
I looked at the rose for a long time, and finally admitted, "The subconscious can be a deep and treacherous place. Can you tell me exactly what message I was supposed to be receiving?"
"No," said the rose, "Some things are better understood on your own."

Last night I had a dream that Asherel and I went on a bike trip. It was to be a trip where we would bike across a lovely countryside for a long time, and camp along the way. As we gathered to meet our team leader, I realized I had forgotten two things- our bikes.... and our camping supplies.  The two things I most needed for the journey, I didn't have.

Life is indeed a bed of roses....but not only roses. In the midst of that beauty and that fragrant life, there are thorns. And there is sacrifice. Without that, perhaps we miss the most important things. We may be in a good place....a beautiful place, but with no means to carry us to a better place, the best place.

As I handed the rose to the woman at the church collecting the auction donations, she smiled, "This is beautiful!"
"Thank you," I told her, "If it doesn't sell, may I have it back?"
The rose blushed. "Go in peace. You understand," she whispered.

Mark 15

 ¹ Very early in the morning, the chief priests, with the elders, the teachers of the law and the whole Sanhedrin, made their plans. So they bound Jesus, led him away and handed him over to Pilate.  ² “Are you the king of the Jews?” asked Pilate.
   “You have said so,” Jesus replied.
 ³ The chief priests accused him of many things. ⁴ So again Pilate asked him, “Aren’t you going to answer? See how many things they are accusing you of.”
 ⁵ But Jesus still made no reply, and Pilate was amazed.
 ⁶ Now it was the custom at the festival to release a prisoner whom the people requested. ⁷ A man called Barabbas was in prison with the insurrectionists who had committed murder in the uprising. ⁸ The crowd came up and asked Pilate to do for them what he usually did.
 ⁹ “Do you want me to release to you the king of the Jews?” asked Pilate, ¹⁰ knowing it was out of self-interest that the chief priests had handed Jesus over to him. ¹¹ But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have Pilate release Barabbas instead.
 ¹² “What shall I do, then, with the one you call the king of the Jews?” Pilate asked them.
 ¹³ “Crucify him!” they shouted.
 ¹⁴ “Why? What crime has he committed?” asked Pilate.
   But they shouted all the louder, “Crucify him!”
 ¹⁵ Wanting to satisfy the crowd, Pilate released Barabbas to them. He had Jesus flogged, and handed him over to be crucified.

Isaiah 53:4-6

 ⁴ Surely he took up our pain
   and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
   stricken by him, and afflicted.
⁵ But he was pierced for our transgressions,
   he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
   and by his wounds we are healed.

Tenuous Perches

"What are you going to write about with that picture?" asked Asherel.
"I don't know," I admitted, "I sometimes paint myself into a corner."

It is a strategy I often employ to jump-start creativity. It helps to overcome the "blank canvas" syndrome, or in the writing world, "writer's block." Not that I have either of those right now, but at times I do. However, I think the reason this malady is fairly rare with me is because I am very in tune with my subconscious and when my conscious creative juices run dry, I just tap into the wacky world of the id.  What invariably happens is I draw a picture with no conscious understanding of why I drew it, but when I look at it, I have a revelation. This is one of the ways I hear God. I don't hear him audibly, in case this entire paragraph has my friends dialing mental health services, but I hear Him as I reach deep into the areas of my murky thoughts and pull out a plum.
(See, that was an example.... I had never really thought, till my fingers typed the word "plum" that little Jack Horner was on my mind at all, or that the poem might really be about someone trying to recognize who He is in God's eyes when he has embraced Christ. It is quite obvious to me now, but I will not go into that as I don't think the message of Little Jack Horner eating his Christmas pie is the direction God is guiding me this morning. But I will say that Wikipedia says Jack Horner is the symbol of an opportunistic hypocrite.)

Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled blog. So I was drawing on my iPod while Asherel was strumming with her guitar teacher, and out of my hand, seemingly on its own, a snowy scene with a snowy white wolf and a snow owl emerged.  The tree the poor owl is sitting on is bleakly naked and bending against the extreme slope of the mountainside it clings to. Its roots might just be barely holding on. The snow wolf is poised to catch any snowy owl that might fall should the tree lose its grip. What the wolf forgets, and maybe even the cold owl himself, is that the owl can fly, and if the tree falls down, the owl will stretch his wings and soar off with the snowflakes.
And now the meaning is totally apparent to me, and I even know why I thought of Jack Horner pulling out a plum, incorrect as my interpretation of the poem might be.

I think sometimes we are all feeling like the snowy owl in my picture, huddled against the snow. The world around us is slowly toppling, and hungry wolves prowl ready to devour us. It is cold and bleak and dark. Sometimes, we forget we have been given the means to escape. We forget we are free to soar on wings created by a loving Father.  Like Little Jack Horner, we had the plum in our pie the whole time, but we are always surprised when at just the right moment we reach in and pull out just the very thing we needed to remind us God is there, and in our despair He loves us still.

"I do paint myself into a corner," I continued explaining to Asherel, "But almost always, God shows me a way out. I rarely know what I am going to write, but for almost a year now, God has sent me a message every morning. I can't wait to see what He will do with the owl and the wolf."

Psalm 55:5-7

⁵ Fear and trembling have beset me;
   horror has overwhelmed me.
⁶ I said, “Oh, that I had the wings of a dove!
   I would fly away and be at rest.
⁷ I would flee far away
   and stay in the desert

Isaiah 40:31

³¹ but those who hope in the LORD
   will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
   they will run and not grow weary,
   they will walk and not be faint.