The Great Artist of the World

I took this picture of the lawn
in front of Old Main
last week.  It's a rainbow!

          Lately I've been drawing a lot because of a Costume Design class I'm taking.  I'm an okay artist (sort of), but my perfectionist side makes it very difficult at times when I'm drawing. 


Sunset over
Bellingham Bay

          On another, but related topic (I'll explain the connection later), I've been enjoying the scenery at my new college a lot lately.  The leaves are beautiful right now.  There are so many different types of trees in a relatively small area that the fallen piles are literal rainbows!  (See picture)  Also, here at Western, we're high on a hill overlooking Bellingham Bay.  When it's somewhat clear, the sunsets are absolutely gorgeous!  When it's cloudy or rainy, the different shades of blue, black, gray, and purple in the sky, water, mountains, and clouds are beautiful together.  When it's misty or foggy, the clouds cover the water and horizon completely.  Then, when you look down from our high position, it looks as if we're perched on the very edge of the world, with only mysterious oblivion beyond.  Beautiful huh?


There is usually a large drop and a view
of the bay and some small,
distant mountains over that
way.  Now you only see clouds.
 Doesn't it seem like the edge
of the world?  Amazing!

          Well, I mentioned drawing and art a while ago.  I promise that I will get to the connection.

          I walk around campus and see these wonderful sights.  But they are obvious to anyone with eyes.  I also see smaller scenes of incredible beauty.  A single raindrop on a pane of glass can capture my attention for minutes at a time.  It might be a design of twigs silhouetted against a street lamp.  Maybe it's the wind, dancing a dizzying ballet with some dust and old wrappers.  It might be a cluster of red berries amidst hundreds of others on a huge holly tree.  Perhaps a single stone sitting by itself in the gutter.  It may be a piece of reddish bark that's fallen off of a tree.  All of these things may seem random and insignificant.  However, for those with the right eyes, it's an incredible piece of art!  Something that beautiful couldn't be an accident.  Therefore, there must be an artist.


A single raindrop on a pane of
glass can capture my attention
for minutes at a time.

          If you don't believe in a Creator and you think the world happened by some big accident, I'm not going to argue with you about it right now.  Though I will ask you one quick question.  What is it like to go through life knowing that you were an accident?  To know that you came from a bunch of chemicals and junk that just happened to meet up?  Doesn't that make YOU just one big mistake?  Sorry, that was three questions.  Moving on.

          Geez!  I really am taking forever getting to the point!

It might be a
design of  twigs
silhouetted
against a street lamp.

          Anyway, for the sake of argument, God is the artist of all the beauty in the world.  He paints living art.  I look around me and I WISH I could paint or draw something half as wonderful as the thousands upon billions of God's paintings surrounding us every day.  Then I started thinking (I'm probably going to ramble pretty bad for a while, but bear with me), He's even more amazing than that.  We only have to create a 2-D picture on a flat surface.  He drew and colored everything from every possible angle under every possible factor.  In science classes they tell you to control the variables in an experiment, because the smallest difference changes everything.  Think about distance.  You can see a tree from 20 feet away and that's one picture.  But every molecule closer or farther away you get is yet a whole NEW picture!  Then there's the variable that everyone sees things differently and in different focuses.  And even that can change from one nano-second to the next!  Every angle is different!  There is an unlimited amount of ways you can view a single object.  Think about what it would be like if you translated all of those things into an actual number of physical paintings.  Mind blowing, huh?


He paints living art.

            Here's another point to think about though.  Of those uncountable numbers of paintings, imagine the tiny, minuscule percent of them that humans ever see!  Think of the billions of beautiful, constantly changing cloud formations that we NEVER see!  All of the amazing, twisted roots in funny shapes under the ground that no eye EVER saw!  All of the single flames flickering like rubies on the face of the sun!  Yet, they are still there.  He still made every painting, every little perfect detail...even though no one will ever see even close to 99.9999999% of them in the whole history of the world. 
 
          I feel really sad that of the things we DO see, it seems impossible for us to appreciate all of them.  No matter how hard we try, we will always think some paintings are ugly.  So not only do we only see a small portion of God's masterpieces, but the vast majority of them...nay...nearly ALL of them are disliked or go unnoticed or unappreciated.  But He still did it.  Still made every painting and every detail in every possible set of variables...though we might never see or like any of them.  He did all of this simply because...He is God...and He loves us...and He is the great artist of the world.


He is the great artist of the world.