Life is a Lizard

"the gecko"

Leviticus 11:30

Take a look at this picture.

photo credit: Mark W. Moffett for National Geographic

Isn't it amazing?  It's an "ornate day gecko".  I saw the photo in National Geographic, so it was even bigger and richer in color than I can achieve here. 

I stared at the picture for several seconds, trying to drink in the colors.  The Turquoise around his eye, and the Azure along the edge of his mouth, and those wonderful Amaranth polka dots in a field of Amazon Green.

Why yes, I do love colors; why do you ask?

Now, National Geographic is hardly a magazine that's known for its spiritual leanings, but I can't read an issue without being reminded of God.  Of course, I can hardly read anything without being reminded of God.  Hence this blog.

But I didn't just think about God, I thought about apples.  And artists.  Specifically my Awesome Girl, and a still life she did last year.  It was a collection of fruit that she painted so beautifully and realistically.  But she was never satisfied with the apple.  It wasn't a red apple, or a green apple, but a little of both.  And she had a heckuva time getting the colors right.

I tried to console her by telling her that the colors of nature are really hard to imitate.  Creation is God's design, and some of it is just impossible for humans to copy.  Green and red just don't blend well.  Except on an apple...

I'm not sure it helped, cuz she's an artist after all, and I don't know if it's true of all artists, but the one I married is very often dissatisfied with his work.  Perfectionist, I guess.

But then I saw this lizard, and I thought, That's the secret!  That's how God does it!  It's about those little dots that make up the lizard's skin.

Do you see?  It's like a mosaic.  Each individual dot has its own color.  I can just picture God dipping His fine-tipped brush into the green, or the pink or the white or the brown.  A touch here, a little lighter there... and impossible for us to see if we're not looking closely.

It's what He's doing in our lives, too.  Taking our good decisions and our bad ones, carefully blending our mistakes with a gradual growth in Him.  Up close, maybe all we see is pain and failures.  Dots.  But if we back up just far enough to see the design, then maybe ~ just maybe ~ we'll remember that God is a designer.  And He's always at work.

I have heard life compared to a tapestry, each thread doing its part to create the picture.  But I think maybe life is like a lizard.

~ "let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us" ~

Psalm 90:17

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