A Painting

I'm sitting here, staring at it, the blank space, the canvas upon which I am to create something out of nothing. It stares back, blank and empty.
The artist who paints for the eyes of others, no matter the quality of his art, is not a man, but rather an empty shell; he is nothing more than matter taking up empty space, something that lives and breathes, and yet does neither.
I'm picking my brush up now, but only for a stroke or two, before placing it back down. So often does life catch us up in its whirl of beautiful colours and excitement that we forget our situation. The veil draws tightly over our eyes, and we don't even see it coming.

Suddenly, it is ripped away, and we find ourselves in a desolate land, something out of a Francisco de Goya painting, standing face to face with a giant--the essence of terror: whatever it is that rips us out of the fairytale world--where happiness is as good as the number of TVs in your house--and places us firmly at the mercy of reality. Hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, 9/11, and even more up-close-and-personal than these.

We find we have decayed into nothing more than shells: empty, dusty clay pots taking up space in some Jone's garage. And so we briefly question it, I briefly question...until the artists get back to work and stir up another fury of colours, and taking away our uncertainty...

The beauty of simplicity

Life has a way of turning itself into a twisted vine of useless nothingness. Knowledge, as some call it, forces its way into our minds and overruns our senses, taking us out of reasonable thought and causing resignation to the overflow as a means dealing with it. Surrender to the mass invasion decays the mind and soul.

Instead of resigning to the overwhelming swirl of colors and ideas one must choose to stand, to weather the storm and take joy in the beauty of the simple things. We must challenge the inflow of ideas intelligently and deliberately and discard that which cannot live up to our challenge. Truth will take on any challenge thrown at her and either soundly break it, or confirm it as her own. We are to seek to develop a worldview that is all-encompassing, but not all-accepting, as only a fool accepts everything that comes into his mind. This is wisdom: the fear and respect of God Almighty, and the ability that comes from Him to pick out Truth and discard the rest from the swirling waters of nothing.

"True religion confronts earth with heaven and brings eternity to bear upon time. "

- A.W. Tozer