You're Too Far Away

"Hey June," they seemed to caw as they whizzed by, "you say we're your favorite birds, but you're sketching the spot-billed mallards, the greenheads, the kawasemi, the egret, the great blue heron...You were kidding us, huh?"

"Wait a minute. I still think your black iridescence is beautiful. But you guys always stay so far away, it's hard to sketch you. And even when crows do come up close, you don't stay still..."

"But what about the time you saw us squabbling for that breakfast worm? It was on the nextdoor rooftop, and just an instant, but it stayed in your mind, and you did a full picture with that."

"And there was the time you were doing this thing called 'Gesture Drawing' that required you to draw things quickly, even animals in motion, I think. I was perched atop a pole when you started sketching real quick once and said it wasn't going to be a detailed drawing, you just wanted to show the feel of the picture. Actually, I really like it."

"Remember the mallard ducklings? I remember when they were really little, the mother mallard and even you were really defensive about my coming too close to where they were. But now that they're as big as the others, it's okay for us to be friends. June, you saw me one day hopping close to the water and staring at the mallard across the creek. But it's not like we're best friends, just across-the-water pals. And you saw that and decided first to take a photo of it, then go home and draw a picture from that photo. I've seen it."

"Those pictures June, what's wrong with them? Do we have to pose for you up close for a long time to have something to call a really nice picture?

I guess not.

But that's what we do with God. We decide how He's going to work, and if things don't happen just that way, we think it hasn't happened, even if there's really nothing wrong with other things He's done.