This morning as I was getting ready for the day, the Creator impressed a lesson on me. He will do that as we are awake and aware, you know. When this happens, it’s almost always significant and changes the way I think about life.
It’s very appropriate that the lesson comes today. Nineteen years ago today, His plan called for taking my husband Home. Though “from dust to dust” is certainly on my mind, and it ties in beautifully with the lesson, it is not the theme. Read on. I think you’ll see what I mean.
Star-gazing and painting are both beloved hobbies for me. It is star-gazing that gifted me with painting, in fact. When I began star-gazing, I began to look for a way to record what I was seeing! I love seeing the beautiful images that real astro-photographers take and those from the Hubble and other large telescopes. I knew, once I started painting, that I would someday try to paint them.
Recently I started on this. It’s a quest, because I am seeking different methods and techniques to accomplish putting on canvas what my heart sees. You can see the results in the photos below: keep in mind that these are experiments, and I’m still learning.
But on to the lesson. Do you know what nebulae are? They are gas and dust. Just illuminated gas and dust, seen from unimaginably far away.
Meditating on the fact that so much of my life has not turned out the way I imagined or planned has been the topic of my journal entries lately. Each time this happens I am found flat on my behind trying to figure out what next. This has been in my mind a lot lately, but this morning it came together with the irrefutable fact of nebulae. These explosions in my life, blowing up all my plans into dust and gas, seem to me to bring me into places of chaos and darkness and heat.
But without the dust and gas of dying stars, there would be no nebulae. No beautiful, chaotic, neon colors in fantastical shapes. Of course, without the light of the stars there would also be no nebulae: so without the Light of the World, the dust and gas of broken dreams and plans are just…dust and gas. But shine light on it and stand back—light years back—and you get the awe-inspiring Orion Nebula, the spine-tingling Pillars of Creation, and the gorgeous Trifid nebula.
Someday, I will have the opportunity to stand light-years back and see the Light of the World shining on and through the dust and gas of the exploded, dead hopes and plans of my life—and I shall gasp. And praise and glorify the Great Artist, Who planned that my life with Him would be beautiful, regardless of the fact that all I am is dust and gas; ugly, dirty, poisonous, and dead.
…and I looked at my recent experiment paintings, which just happened to be resting in a ray of the rising sun, and realized that they were made…with dust. Rock and dust. Many people have already been blessed by them and have said that they see them as beautiful.
Well, now so do I.
