Beholding

Artist–blogger Michael Chesley Johnson writes about his struggle to paint the Grand Canyon. As soon as he has paints mixed, the light shifts and the image changes: “Learning how to paint the Grand Canyon well, I think, will take a lifetime. Every moment is different—clouds fly over, shadows creep, colors shift with the speed of a chameleon. You can try abstracting it as you would any landscape, but because of its slippery complexity, it resists easy analysis. But worse, the Canyon is seductive and lures you away from your painting. Rather than paint, you want to just look deeply into its mysteries. At one point, I felt its call so strongly that if I had suddenly tumbled headfirst into its awesome beauty, I don’t think I would have minded” (Michael Chesley Johnson, “Painting the Grand Canyon” [blog], March 5, 2010, http://mchesleyjohnson.blogspot.com/2010/03/painting-grand-canyon.html). The Grand Canyon is nothing compared to the grandeur of God. We can’t capture the colors of the canyon with paint, but God says we can capture what he looks like, we can behold him.