Moments of Revelation

The sun slid down a crystal sky like a water droplet on a west facing window. With a generosity unknown to mere mortals, it poured out its warm light over the valley as if that was its last chance to do so but with the confidence that tomorrow would dawn anew and that tomorrow its storehouses of light and heat would remain as full as they’d been on the sun’s first day. Beneath the pale blue vault overhead, grass as green as emerald absorbed the warmth, the sun’s soft touch. Stalks capped with silver seeds swayed in perfect step beneath the only counterpoint to the sun, an afternoon breeze. Poppies like red exclamation points punctuating a paragraph of green stretched as far as the eye could see. Along with the explosions of red were splashes of white daisies with their sun-yellow centers, stalks of violet larkspurs with their streaks of blue, and miniature yellow stars of prairie parsley, all rising and falling on the sea of green like schools of fish.

Clouds rolled overhead, white, wispy, and reaching heavenward on top—gray, dense, and sagging earthward underneath. The air on which they rode across the sky absorbed the perfume of the flowers and dispersed it throughout the entire valley.

A couple made their way along a winding dirt road through the sprawling field. The light was golden and the shadows long as they walked, hand in hand, eyes tracing the contours of the sea of green on both sides, hearts full of the wonder of existence. It really did exist, didn’t it? It was no dream that had painted the canvas in which they’d become a part? The man stopped, took a knee, and plucked a stem loaded with violet petals. They were as real as the nose with which he smelled them. And there they were in the middle of it.

As the man gazed at the finely crafted petals of purple, a sensation filled him, the sensation that he, too, had been just as finely handcrafted, the sensation that he, too, had been painted with equally intricate strokes, the sensation that he, too, was the labor of a love wider than the oceans. You instinctively look up when such a feeling grips you. That’s what the man did, as if looking for the source, the unimaginably massive source, of such a good and master artist, an artist capable of painting such a field as this, an artist who knew full well that it would last mere days but who didn’t care because of his love of art and his infinite creativity for finite masterpieces. And for a moment, a moment as long as it takes for a seed to fall to the ground, the man knew he was not alone in the universe, and, if it was possible to believe, he knew he was loved by the very one who had stretched out time and space when both were merely an idea in the mind of God.

And up above it all, above the pale blue vault named sky and the clouds as soft and white as balls of cotton and the raindrop of a sun slowly streaking down the glass in search of repose just below the horizon, there stood the Maker. He saw the yellow sun and the eggshell blue sky and the verdant grass and the ruby, gold, and violet flowers. He saw their perfectly tuned orchestra of color, their offering of worship, worship made simply by their existence, and their fleeting lives that in no way negated their worth or their significance or the investment he made to paint each one precisely as he saw fit. He saw the man holding the violet larkspur, staring into the expanse of virgin sky, a man he had also painted on his canvas of the universe, and the Maker smiled. He smiled like a five-year-old smiles after a long stint scribbling across a white page with crayons. He smiled because he had poured a piece of himself into his work. He smiled because he’d colored the field and the man and the woman with love bleeding from every last fingertip. He smiled because he knew he had done a good job. He’d painted his masterpiece with an abandon known only to children, with a fervor known only to lovers, with a contentment known only to the innocent, and with a patience known only to the old.

And for a moment, the man on the dirt road, surrounded by glory, felt the Maker’s touch, the very reason the master artist had reached for his paintbrush to begin with. And the Maker’s heart overflowed.