A message from my Parent

As I was packing up to move last July, I was taking a lot of stuff to the trash. (None of the people who helped me move could have imagined how much stuff didn't make it to the new place!) But, of course, that meant a large number of trips to the community dumpsters.

On one such trip, early in the morning on trash day, I found a white framed canvas leaning up against the dumpster, onto which someone with a great eye for design had painstakingly lettered a message from God. Every word was in a different lettering style and color, mixing bold and italic and cursive and block, serif and san serif, outline and shadow with an amazing rainbow of color. And if the visual presentation was great, the message was pretty cool, too:

My dearest child,
I am constantly working in your life, adding this color, that shadow, this line. Like an artist with a paintbrush, I am making you into the very image of my beautiful and sinless child.

Don't constantly question what I'm doing. Don't struggle against my hand. Learn to trust the Artist who stands back and sees from his own perspectie what is needed in the portrait he is creating.

If you must question something today, ask this: "How will the circumstances of this day make me more like Jesus?" Then thank Me for the circumstances, and receive my grace to walk through them. I love you with a tenderness you cannot imagine.
Love,
God

Let's face it - how could I leave that kind of message (both in beauty and content) to go to the trash?

Recently, in going through some boxes, I found that canvas again, and ended up hanging it on the inside of my door, so I can read it everyday as I go outside. I can't help believing that my day will go better if I remember that my Creator really is constantly working in my life, working with color, beauty and design.

And it helps to believe that God loves me with a tenderness I cannot imagine.

My hope and prayer is that the person who crafted this prayer canvas did not part with it because they were tired of hearing it.