Doodle

When I was young and obliged to sit through church services, I would pass the time during sermons by doodling.  One of my earliest doodles was to draw an outline of my hand and fill it in with hundreds of little jelly bean-type shapes. Hey, it kept my hands busy and my mind focused, often even on the sermon, believe to or not.

Doodling became a habit of mine.  I doodled my way through phone conversations, classes, meetings, seminars...anytime when I was a captive audience, so to speak.  I doodled in the margins of my notes, on napkins, on bulletins, on scraps of paper, sometimes even on my skin.  Naturally, these little meaningless scribblings weren't permanent or noteworthy; they certainly weren't what one could consider art...or were they? 

I just discovered that there's a thriving art form out there based on DOODLING!  Be still, my doodling heart!  It's called Zentangle and I've suddenly found a home for my aimless and wandering pen.  Doodling with a purpose. Ahh...I'm on my home planet on this one. A wild idea just occurred to me. Jesus stooped and wrote something on the ground with his finger in John 8. People love to speculate about what He was writing, but what if He was just doodling?  Doodling while the people chewed over the words, "He who is without sin, cast the first stone."  Doodling while the Holy Spirit did His convicting work on their hearts. Doodling in the dirt while exposing the dirt in people's souls. Don't worry; I'm not going to place a lot of weight on that somewhat absurd speculation, but it makes me smile.

So here are my first two Zentangles.

A Little Bit of Gray Hair...

Yesterday I was raising little children.  Today I qualify for the senior discount at the grocery store.  Yesterday I could tote a young child around with one arm and carry a couple loads of groceries with the other.  Today, a little bit of shoveling causes my arms to ache and I must ask for help with carrying things.  It's breathtaking what can happen in such a short time.  Although many women my age are dying the gray out of their hair, I've decided to embrace it.  I wish I could say that this is symbolic of embracing the aging process, but I have to admit that it's mostly because I'm lazy and cheap.  In truth, I sometimes envy the youthful look of those who turn back time by putting the color back in their hair.  I didn't realize how much I took that youthfulness for granted until I began losing it.  

"But though our outer man is decaying, 

yet our inner man is being renewed day by day.  

For momentary light affliction is producing in us 

an eternal weight of glory far beyond comparison 

while we look not at the things which are seen, 

but at the things which are not seen.  

For the things which are seen are temporal, 

but the things which are unseen are eternal."

1 Corinthians 4:16-18

So it appears that my vision needs adjusting.  I see gray hair, but I need to see instead the daily inner renewal.  When my focus is on aches and pains, I need to put on a different lens and see the eternal weight of glory that those afflictions are producing.  I've always been near-sighted.  It's time to become far-sighted.