From the hand of the Master Artist

Last evening at church, our pastor shared a very encouraging message.  I hope to share more about it later on, but he ended the message with just a simple exhortation that -- no matter what difficulty may be going on in our lives -- we need to take our eyes off the circumstances, take our eyes off ourselves, and fix our eyes on the Lord, who is in control of our situation and has a plan and purpose for all that He allows.  Simple?  Yes, but not so easy to put into practice sometimes.  I find that often I can take my eyes off the circumstances and I can fix them on God, but taking my eyes off myself (how I feel, how tired I am, etc.) is a lot harder to do.

And so I have been pondering our pastor's exhortation ever since, and am asking God to help me make this a reality in my life: to help me to look at Him, and not at the circumstances or myself.  So, this morning I headed out to do some grocery shopping.  As I approached the car, the first thing I saw was a fallen leaf on the driveway.  Yes, yes, that's what leaves do this time of year, but this was special.  It was ... plaid.  The scan doesn't really do it justice, but the dark areas are plain dark maroon, while the intersecting "plaid" areas are multicolored red, yellow, and green.  I have never seen a leaf like this one.

I've noticed, especially this year,  that often the first leaves to fall are multicolored.  I shared some of those in an earlier post.  And here are a couple more that I spotted this morning.  Aren't they pretty?

But this plaid, or maybe one would say argyle, leaf just caught my eye. 

And my very first thought was of our all-wise, all-powerful, incredibly imaginative Creator.  Wow!  And I had just asked Him to help me keep my eyes fixed on Him and to remind me of His power and sovereignty in my life and in our world.  What a neat way He picked to remind me!