How generous is Your artistry, God that you made all things in creation to be enhanced by other things. Leaves --- How lovely in themselves. How marvelous that they sprout like tiny parasols in the sweet spring air, are opened in the heat of summer and turned from green to crimson & gold by the tangy chemistry of fall. But no, that is not enough. You have added the sun and the wind and the rain to toss them about, adorn them with bangles, make them dance and shimmer! And the trunks of trees! How stately they rise, strong and sufficient with their rough dark bark. They reach for the sky, making a mighty harmony of their own. Yet their beauty too must be heightened, given an added dimension by the silver brush strokes of sun and rain. And the rain itself. It is not just falling water to quench the thirst of the earth. It too is enhanced by all it touches -- rooftops or leaves or lake. It runs across the water before the wind like an advancing army, shields flashing! Or it falls gracefully, each drop a dancer spreading her skirts on the shining surface of a ballroom floor. Even Your rocks would not need to be embellished, God. Their gray-white solidity, often glittering from their own white substance...... their pure raw sculpturing. Yet even a rock is endlessly resculptured in sun and shadow and storm. Or a mantle of moss is draped across it's shoulders, or a meandering vine. Or flowers creep from a crevice. Or a bird's nest is tucked there, from which music bursts and bright wings. For creatures, too, participate in this constant interplay of lovliness. Dogs and cats and butterflies. Squirrels and people and children and all wild things. Life....life..... all dipping & darting about together or only just pausing to observe. But all adding myriad varieties of radiance and color. How marvelous, this ever-changing pattern of the world's beauty, God. How You must love us to create for us such interlocking lovliness. Don't let us ever be indifferent to it. Let us always see in it Your generosity.....Your tremendous artistry. Marjorie Holmes, author excerpt from "Lord, Let Me Love"