It is difficult at times to put into words and express what a relationship with God is sometimes like. I’ll state upfront it’s not all clear skies and always feeling he’s there…but there is an undercurrent, a steady-ness, a reverb of always knowing he’s there. But even then things are surprising just how much he cares for us.
Case in point tonight I helped facilitate a class at our church called Starting Point. I did this once before, probably 3 years or more ago. It’s a cool class and has these story cards where you ask a question and then everyone looks through the cards and picks a picture that helps them answer and explain how it speaks to them. Three years ago for a question about how I felt about God or my spiritual life I choose this picture of the sole green crayon in a box of red crayons. What I explained at the time was that sometimes when it comes to god and religious things I feel like that green crayon in a sea of red. I think and see things different. Sometime the way I view God seems to flow differently than the norm or traditional way of seeing things. Sometimes I don’t see lines where others do or may draw my lines in a different spot. It’s okay…but sometimes feels a bit odd in some settings, or just like you don’t always fully belong because how you believe is a little different than most others.
Which brings me to tonight and that picture again. I took a picture of it tonight because it jogged a memory. It landed at me differently and caused me to tilt my head to one side, kind of saying, “huh” when I saw it again tonight. And then it hit me…not an audible voice but a knowing outside of myself. I recalled a picture just posted in my birthday posts from a family friend. A picture of me as a child in a church Christmas play. I was in a group of four kids and we were all..you guessed it…crayons. You’ve got one guess as to which color I somehow was. At the age of, I don’t know maybe 8 or 9 I was a green crayon.
And it was at that point I knew…or rather it was made known to the inner most part of me that God knew from even before then that I was a green crayon. That He made me that way on purpose, and loves me in that uniqueness. He didn’t make us all to be the same way. He didn’t make us even all to connect to him the same way. You may be a green crayon in a sea of red. Or maybe your feel there’s nothing unique about you. But there is. God picks and chooses us. He loves the unique instance of humanity that we are. Not because we get it right but because he made us that way. And his heart delights in drawing with the colors you bring to this world. There is a hue, an artistic expression of him that only you can breathe into this world. My prayer is that we can all hear him dancing around the crayon box looking for us, excited to draw. Some of our crayons are just stubs, broken to bits, paper tattered and torn and just a fraction of a piece left. But he is a master artist and can draw a beautiful masterpiece even with a nub of a crayon. May we all not hide away but allow ourselves to believe enough to find his hand. To allow the story of his life in us to find its way to the page. I promise he’s hanging it on his fridge. I know it without a doubt. 🙂❤️
From The Whale's Belly 