Sunday Afternoon Tea

Christopher and I were driving home yesterday afternoon, on the road with all the beautiful lilies in every ditch and nearby field.

I mentioned how beautiful they are and how prolific, wondering how there came to be hundreds and hundreds of them along country roads. After all, there was no "ditch lily" Johnny Appleseed who made their way through these Midwestern fields and ditches.

He replied that God truly is the first Artist and Creator and that He does love flowers (and color). On the outside, I remarked to him how very much he sounded like the Schaeffers (Francis and Edith).

On the inside, I was doing a happy dance only mothers who have spent years homeschooling their hyperactive, ADHD boys would understand.

He gets it! He gets it! After all these years, he really does GET IT! Hallelujah! (I can't believe how calm I appeared on the outside.)

Oh my friends, it started with the birth of my first child as she and I would go to the zoo and I'd tell her all about the God of the Bible and how He was the one who came up with the idea of a monkey, and a lion, and the duck billed platypus (my personal favorite animal as it appears to have all the leftovers of others). She and I went on hunts for Pooh sticks and followed where the creek went. We walked along the shores of Lake Michigan in summer when we lived in Holland and on weekends near Grand Haven when Dad could go with us.

We talked of Beginnings and God and Wonderful things of which we do not understand... like the waves and why worms are important... and snakes... and spiders. We took magnifying glasses to snowflakes and chatted how God made each one individual (although I wonder how anyone knows?). I could tell at a very young age that she "got it"... she knew there was a Creator and freely expressed herself. Of course, she was also my verbal first born girl.

Then twelve years later, I had my boy and things were quite different. In between war games and roller blades, he and I hiked the hills (so to speak... small hills... okay, in my part of the Midwest they are basically big bumps in the ground) at the local park. We talked about God and Beginnings, looked for rocks that amazed us, and wildflowers, and leaves, and wondered what were safe plants to walk through and which were not.

I talked about how God made the tiniest of bugs extremely important to our lives as human beings. We wondered about the trees and what they were like before the Fall, Dad (who has a Master's degree in Forestry) believes they were straight and without blemish at that time.

But in the past few years, I have seen the realization blossom. It had begun to come together... linking the God of the Bible with His Creation... Beauty... the Author of Beauty... God, the Artist. He gets it now. Years upon years, precept upon precept, hike upon hike (I could never do that now!), science kits, models, boxes and boxes of "important" rocks, nights watching stars, calling the family together when we see a harvest moon out the window...

Chatting about how lovely God made Sasha's face and Storm's striped body... they were sisters and how the marks were different... yet, the same... breathtakingly beautiful when seen from the viewpoint of a personal Creator. Have you looked closely at a cat lately? Well, one that loves you enough to let you near? God, the Creator.

We must create because we are made in the image of a Creator. We bake cakes and try a new icing, we draw pictures in journals, we paint beautiful scenery, we write music heard only in our mind and translate to notes which fill others with joy, ...

We think of new ways to put together vegetables to make stew, we sew quilts by cutting perfectly good fabric to put back together in stunning designs, we write books so others can learn, we put together stories for others to get lost in on rainy days, ...

We study theology and explain the God of the Universe as best we can in sermons and articles, we teach about geology and entomology and engineering, we put together warm & cozy rooms that make our family love to come home, we arrange flowers to delight everyone who can view them, we grow vegetables to feed our family, we spend our days with furry friends who exchange our care for them with great love...

Oh, my friend, may we all "get it"... may we know that as we feel the need to create, we are the creations of Him who... for some reason... felt the need to create us first. Amazing.