Knowledge

On a page of penciled writing,

Varying in value and thickness, erasable words are recorded in rows. In columns, scribbled in the margins; some writing is emboldened and underlined, some slashed through and crossed out, some completely rubbed away and written over.

In the middle of this page are three words written in unadulterated black ink.

God is love.

That is my immovable truth. Regardless of what else I scribble, question, consider, challenge, destroy, or discover, this is what I am built upon.

I want to continue exploring the pencil truths, and perhaps eventually there shall be a more words of ink written in my heart. I know that I have much to learn and I am a child. While I am enjoying the transience of my erasable ideas and learning from them, I must also be aware of the importance in discovering God's permanent realities. I have to seek out the stones, while sifting sand through my fingers.

And through everything, I must remember that there is very little I need to know and understand. I am a little girl, I must stay a little girl, and come to sit at the feet of Jesus. A little girl who knows nothing more about Him but that He loves her, and she can love Him in return.

Plagiarism

I see something beautiful, something good, and I want to adopt it as my own. I want to grasp it and weave it into my own identity, even if I must rearrange the good and beauty I already have.
I see us all – myself especially – striving so desperately to avoid cliché, yet sometimes it is true of you and you can’t. It may be cliché for the simple fact that it is such a widely recognized truth that too many people have identified with, or an artistry which has transcended the subjective eyes of too many beholders.
Why the urge for definition? Why do I want to create something that is beautiful but most importantly, unique and different from the other beauties I see? I desire a winsome color and symmetry in my own being; a depth of goodness, an iridescence and luminosity - but I want it to be rare and unique. Understood by someone - but I want it to originate in me and remain uncommon to the world surrounding. Why is this?
Many answers rise to the surface of my thoughts.

I must always be who God wants me to be, even here in this arena - I must not try to define my personality, to shape it differently from what it is into what I want it to be, just because I like how He designed another's better.

Heavy rain

The complete peace that settles in the bottom of my soul, and then fills it entirely, has accompanied the weather, as it always does. One rarely comes to call without the other.

I look out my window. It's a dark afternoon, the rain is pouring heavily, and so I get up from the floor where my sketchbooks and pencils are spread out to make tea. The lounge is empty, and so once the water is heating, I walk over to the great bay window to look over the quad. The sky is flat grey, sending down cold, fast, heavy drops and darkening the sidewalks, the roofs - the grass is darker green, the forest is thicker.

Suddenly something small flies past the window; it comes back, circles around, and a honey bee lands on the brick ledge just outside. It crawls around the space of dry shelter, jerking and flicking its legs as it moves away from the rain, and its wings droop.

Breathing in peppermint steam, I hold the warm cup of tea between my fingers and think about being in the world.

The music I listen to doesn't destroy my earnest effort to think on good and excellent things, though most of my lyrics are secular. Hearing friends swear and joke crudely doesn't tempt me to do the same, and doesn't diminish my affection for them. Watching films with messages that are contrary to the truth I know isn't damaging to my faith. Reading books and hearing lectures with views and opinions that conflict with mine don't anger, but rather intrigue, and encourage me to know and question why I believe what I do.

None of these things - music, films, lectures, people who don't believe - are necessarily stumbling blocks for those with the knowledge that Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 8. But they are all individual raindrops that can at times either fall soft and light, or hard and heavy.

Sometimes we have to stop and dry off our wings. The rain that didn't seem to hinder us at first is making it difficult to fly, and so we must find a place out from under the open sky, and let the water leave our wings.

In those moments we must retreat to quiet, to simplicity, and to uninterrupted stillness before Elohim, our Father and Great Love.