Life

I can understand taking a tree, sawing it into boards, and using the boards to build a piece of furniture. Or a home. I marvel at a completed room or a well-designed chair, sturdy, comfortable, beautiful.

I can wrap my mind around using pulp from trees or plants to make paper. And using papers rainbowed with color to make stationary and greeting cards and scrapbooks of memories. I can linger over pieces of paper, drinking in colors and designs.

I can relate when I watch an artist create a picture from a few raw materials, turning blank into stunning. I'm not an artist, but a few times when a project turned out better than I even imagined it could, I think that's how great artists must feel about their work.

I take the marvelous into my own hands when I drill holes into trees, collect the sap, boil it down and preserve it in jars... delicious sweetness made of nothing but tree nectar. Every Februrary my pulse quickens with excitement to participate in the miraculous again.

But some miracles I can't begin to understand or participate in. These miracles are so beyond me that trying to figure them out leaves me simply shaking my head at my own limits, and praising in awe God, the Artist.

A tiny brown seed put into wet dirt, in four days pushes itself up as a slender green sprout reaching for sunlight. It grows steadily until, by fall, its fat stem lifts highest leaves chest high, its thick branches requiring a frame support to keep from toppling the plant because they bear heavy red tomatoes hundreds of times the size of the tiny seed the bore this plant.

The long stretched out arm of my littlest one dangles from the crib as she sleeps. Just 19 months ago her whole body was small enough to fit inside my skin, and now her legs run her around wherever she tells them to go. Her eyes furrow as she teaches her fingers to fit shapes into holes. Her feet stamp and her body dances "no" when her sturdy will is crossed, and she gently strokes with soft fingers and leans her silky head into my neck in apology when she has forgotten herself and roughly swiped my face. This little one, where did she come from? A tiny seed too small to see.

Some works I can see the process for and understand how they come to be, marvelous as they are. Works by mankind. But His works are too wonderful for me. I can't do anything but blink back tears of awe. Incomprehensible miracles in every plant and animal, bird, fish, and person on this earth.

No wonder the angels never stop singing his praise.