Blooms that Silently Sound

You have seen them. There, on the walls of the dentist that you use in your town, those single bloomed paintings that are often replicas of the original hand tinted versions that were painstakingly draw and colored by hand. Often these paintings were made by the Spanish, as they explored what is called the New World.

Just as the volumes that were written by the explorers themselves, they were what we would currently call the illustrators toiling mostly in the silver silence. Men of great constitution, carefully protecting the pens and paper that they would sketch and paint on, rendering the stark, yet beautiful flowers of another land far from their own.

And as it were, these men were akin to those paintings that they presented. . .silent in presentation, yet speaking from great depth to those around them. It is almost stunning to think that these men are much more published in these long years after their death than those hardy, full blown explorers ever dreamed to be.

It has recently become a study in the Art world that these images have become not a picture to be critiqued, but studied on the level of a visual history of the past. These images were extremely instrumental in their time in forging empires ahead in the pursuit of raw materials. While the great explorers told of the riches, these paintings demonstrated the richness of the lands, and goaded kingdoms into great exploits.

Sometimes, it takes a painting provoking us into the next step. Hearing is not quite enough for furthering our vision. It is in the blooms of life, no matter how spare the terrain, no matter how tough the journey, no matter how dogged the explorer was in getting there. It is the hallowed pages of scripture that we see that God understands this and paints beautiful pictures of his grace and mercy so that we can understand.

It seems that it was Joshua who would bring back grapes, and say this is the best picture of what I found. He didn’t bring back a giant. The giants weren’t worthy of a picture as the grapes painted for him. Did he ignore the giants? No, but they didn’t rank high enough for him to drag one back.

Often we look, as the children of Israel did, at the giants instead of the grapes. It seems that our pictures are skewed by the height of giants, and not the pleasantness of the grapes. Our battles shouldn’t be the beacon. . the beauty of the land should.

Not only did Joshua hold the grapes in high regard, but another picture that was solely his sustained him through the faithlessness of a whole generation, and that was of a mountain.

I'm afraid it's been too long to try to find the reasons why
I let my world close in around a smaller patch of fading sky
But now I've grown beyond the walls to where I've never been
And it's still winter in my wonderland

I'm waiting for the world to fall
I'm waiting for the scene to change
I'm waiting when the colors come
I'm waiting to let my world come undone

I close my eyes and try to see the world unbroken underneath
The farther off and already it just might make the life I lead
A little more than make-believe when all my skies are painted blue
And the clouds don't ever change the shape of who I am to You

When I catch the light of falling stars my view is changing me
My view is changing me

Written by Dan Haseltine, Charlie Lowell, Stephen Mason and Matt Odmark

Sometimes you grow beyond your walls without realizing it. Perhaps it was that Joshua walked around those forty years and did not think about those around him dying. . .they frozen in their unbelief, and him growing beyond them because he had enough vision. His world grew far beyond the reaches of his limited reach. . . Can yours?