the Artist’s gift

Our girls love to draw.  All five of them.  From the time they could hold a pencil, they started drawing.

I still can’t draw stick people that are identifiable, but God has given my girls the gift of being able to draw well.  Glenn is very artistic, so I’m sure this gift runs through the Orr line.  Along with feet where the second toe is bigger than the big toe, which just looks odd to someone like me whose toes decrease in size in a more evenly graduated way.

But I digress. :)

 

This gift from our Creator is a quietly glorious thing.

A piece of blank paper. 

A common pencil.

And stroke by stroke, line by line, I begin to see what my daughter sees in her mind’s eye.

 

 

Often as I’ve watched them draw something over the years, I’ve thought how they don’t start where I would.  I would draw a circle first for a face.  Then add eyes and ears, etc.

But they start with an eye.  Just one eye. 

Or a hand.

I’ve even watched them start at the feet.

The interesting thing about this, is the way the final picture comes as something of a surprise to me.

  

Sometimes, I can figure out where they are going with their drawings, but sometimes I’m just not sure how they’ll get there.

And the details they add to their pictures astound me.  I didn’t even realize I noticed tufting around a button, or that little freckle by an earlobe, or the lines which strong muscles form on a horse’s neck. But these are details which the girls notice, and draw.

I remember a few years ago, we took the kids downtown to an Art Exhibit.  It was just incredible all the different kinds of art that had been created.  One artist was a woman who drew beautiful, amazingly life-like portraits. We talked with her for a while and when I told her how surprised I was when the girls drew those tiny details in their drawings, she smiled. She told me that is how an artist sees life.  Many people see the “big picture” of what they look at, but an artist sees the finer details, and then draws them. 

 

And it made me think about our Artist. 

How He has made so many amazing and beautiful fine details all over the place, all around us, but often, most of us just don’t see them.

We see the bigger picture, or maybe even kind of notice a small detail, but we don’t put our pencils to the paper and draw it.

 

And then there are the times when He shows Himself to us through these fine details in our lives.

And we see things with different eyes. 

And we see Him with new eyes. 

 

And both our appreciation of His gifts and our thankfulness to Him are increased!

I pray He will give you eyes today, to see the fine details of the blessings He has given to you! :)

 

“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then we shall see face to face. 

                                                            Now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.”