Singing Flowers

14 x 24 Isaiah 55:12 You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and the hills will burst into song before you and the trees of the field will clap their hands.

I painted "Singing Flowers" while staying in my aunts home in Highlands, NC and brought it home with intentions of finishing it and putting it with the others to be sold. I had been praying about a scripture to put with it, and the verse, "you will go out in joy and be led forth in peace" kept running through my mind. So I settled on that scripture and put my finishing touches on it. When my seven year old, Mary Helen, saw the painting, she fell in love with it and asked if she could have it for her room. I didn't take her seriously at first because if it was up to her, none of my paintings would ever leave our home and her room would be her mom's art gallery. I didn't think the colors were right for her room, because there was no purple in her room, and I told her I would paint her another one that would match her room better. But she persisted and seemed incredibly determined that the painting was to go in her room. She said she didn't care if the colors matched, and I began to think that maybe she had a point. She was starting to become a little testy about it, and I could see that I wasn't winning this battle without a fight. Choose your battles, they say, so I told her we'd take a look and see if it worked in her room. When we put it on her wall, she looked at it and then looked at me with the biggest smile you've ever seen. I looked around her room and realized it matched perfectly. I had never noticed the purple in her curtains-the other colors had overshadowed it. It was made for her room. Then I remembered the scripture God had given me. "You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and the hills will burst into song before you and the trees of the field will clap their hands." Then it hit me. Without knowing it, I had painted this painting for her. Mary Helen has a deep love for nature and is fascinated by creation. She is amazed by every flower, every insect, every animal, and all that God has made. On our last trip to the beach, we were looking for shells and stumbled upon a dead jellyfish covered with sand. I wanted to cover my nose, but she and her sister bent down and scraped every ounce of sand off of him so they could see his true colors. Then, she looked at me with eyes as big as canonballs and said, "Oh Momma, he is beauuuuuuuuuuuuutiful". God's creation truly "bursts into song" before her. The day after we hung the painting in her room, she drew a picture of some flowers and said "Mom, look, they are singing." So I chose to name her painting "Singing Flowers". Now when I lay down with my girls at night, I look at her painting and pray that she would "go out in joy and be led forth in peace" and that Gods creation would continue to "burst into song" before her. I pray that she would know the inexpressible joy of the Lord that causes us to see things from the eye of the creator, that when she looks at his creation, it would burst into song with evidence of who has made it. Isaiah 55:13 goes on to say that "instead of the thornbush will grow the pine tree, and instead of briers the myrtle will grow. This will be for the Lords renown..." I pray that for God's fame and glory, the soil in her heart would grow "pine trees and myrtle", and I claim that verse for my child because the Lord has now spoken it to me through his word. Amen.