Trees and Paradise

Yesterday,

I took my sketch book and a newly sharpened pencil and tried my hand at drawing. I do occasionally make the attempt. I found a shaded tree as subject matter. All the while thinking that its roots looked like knotted bones resting on the earth. The tree was beautiful. My sketch was not. But it made me undone this one little poetic thought. God had designed me to think and view the world in this way. It gives him joy when I play upon my words.

Lately, I've wanted to do nothing but grow deeper into God as much as I know how. I've had this hunger to read the bible and books about Jesus. I read the entire book of Proverbs yesterday. I want to read it again and again and again. I've started reading Knowing God by J.I. Packer. It's a great comfort being reminded of God's character. In an earlier post I've said that I've been trying to escape what I am. I feel so intensely at times that it can be tiring. And now I'm starting to realize in God my depth of emotion is not some sort of twisted defect or a joke that also went terribly flat. If I stare into God's face long enough I will find in his eyes staring back at me the security I had lost. A version of myself I can live with and be free and love. A version of myself that is more true than I know because God knows me better than I do. He knows what I will do and say and feel and think even before I've lived it all out. And its been good to be reminded that God doesn't forget. It's impossible for him to forget. And so it is impossible for me to be forgotten.