Little by little, day by day, sums up how life is lived. Every morning our task is to get out of bed and get back into our daily business and prepare for the random surprise occurrences, the special events, or accidents that come into all our lives.
My husband’s nephew has suffered a one auto accident that caused him to lose his left arm and the past week has been a series of visits to him in hospital and wonderings about him and his family’s welfare and how to help them. The family is rallying around him and watching prayerfully. Complications from bruising, plastic surgery, and possible internal injuries aren’t ascertained completely even now a full week later. We had dinner with some of the family last evening and appreciated that we have each member to hold us up in good times and bad.
We just enjoyed those comforts and blessings and quietly conversed about these things and casual daily doings while we ate meatloaf, mashed potatoes, fresh green snap peas, cooked greens, and fresh salad, and kraut and wienies, with a choice of fresh baked 50/50 wheat bread and blue cornbread, and a payday type cake for desert, some of which the guests brought to make dinner into the banquet it always becomes whenever we get together. It was a serious bounty of plenty and we all were hungry for both the food and togetherness. After a long while of talking at table after dinner we moved to find more comfort in plush chairs and sofas in the living room where we continued our conversations unwilling to part, yet being sated with savory foods and some of us (me as hostess in particular) being a bit drowsy.
Gazing at one of my paintings of cut grapefruits and sea shells my sister-in-law, my husband’s brother’s wife, asked how I painted something to appear so lifelike as to be able to pluck it off the canvas. That’s a very basic common question that always causes me to ponder how to succinctly convey the entire process in a couple of easy sentences at least some of the method of artistic portrayal. I try to answer according to my perception of the questioner’s level of interest in making the inquiry as we all do with such questionings, no need to teach a seminar from the idle question.
But she was genuinely curious and likes my work enough to be proud of the painting I gave her for her living room. So I just said, “Little by little, just looking and painting little bit by little bit, day by day.” Of course that didn’t tell too much technically, but she would know more and asked, “Yes, but how do you know what to paint and how it looks, do you have something to go by? Do you take a picture?” I replied, “Yes, and yes, I take a picture after I study the subject.” I didn’t elaborate. Her interest does mean a lot to me though and I thanked her for her questions.
I woke up this morning thinking of “little bit by little bit, day by day“, and how the important things are so hard to explain in few words to most of us. Writers are gifted with the ability and the rest of us try to break the barriers of understanding to share these passages of common times, surprises, events. Then I prayed and opened up the bible the Word of God to;
Isaiah 40
King James Version (KJV)
40 Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God.
2 Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received of the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.
3 The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
4 Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain:
5 And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.
6 The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field:
7 The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass.
8 The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever.
I read through chapter 42 then moved over to other readings in the New Testament, received no earth shattering direct wisdom but the general principles therein, and then I began to appreciate a bit more how it is just little bit by little bit, day by day, God is training us to observe Him in all things and helping us to see with our eyes and hear with our ears through the power of the Holy Ghost through submission to the Father through the Son when our prayers are tempered and enabled by the Word when we remember to read it.
Grapefruit and Lightning Whelk Shells
Just as the paintings are completed and then become mysterious yet self evident finished works our lives are an evident witness of God’s creation and perfecting grace that are hard to break down and explain succinctly. It takes little bit by little bit, day by day walking in the Spirit with Jesus.
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