Doodles On A Masterpiece
As I pulled the car into a spot at the edge of the parking garage I saw the sky shine bright blue between the rough block wall and the concrete deck above me. Further down the wall on the right I noticed a tree branch leaning in—green leaves detailed against the grey expanse. Moments before I had been driving under the open sky with living things growing all around, the hills in front and the sea behind me. Now, I was enclosed in a concrete case of re-formed rock, where every earthly material was repurposed beyond recognition. Those materials must have come from nature originally—they had to—but the ways we work with nature are often a stark contrast to the ways nature itself works.
The car park was built to serve one utilitarian purpose: to hold cars, which is good. But then look at the way nature holds things: grapes with their seeds, clouds carrying rain, and the ocean contained in coastline cliffs and beaches. Each aspect of nature serves a purpose, or many purposes, and yet somehow they make the bare, utilitarian minimalism of the parking garage seem entirely out of place. Each aspect of nature is intricately designed—down to the last microscopic detail—and the world bursts around us with unnecessarily abundant colours and scents, with autumn trees, wild blackberries, and the striped bumblebees that lift themselves on transparent wings. If God had wanted to make a functional world, he could have done it in the style of the parking garage: bare, dim, and adequate. He did not, because he is not only an architect but an artist as well, and this world is his masterpiece.
Sometimes I wonder why God lets us draw so freely on his artistry. Our simple square box-buildings and squiggly road-lines lay themselves out on his intricate background like the careless doodles of a toddler on a Rembrandt. Sometimes we achieve more—we shape his stone and carve his wood carefully, in imitation of his artistry. These are our national treasures, our protected structures, the tourist traps that command our attention and distract us from the even greater intricacies of every common wildflower, every singing sparrow and human face. God must have seen the artistry in our faces, and valued the artistry he planted in our human nature—otherwise why would he encourage us, like a Father, to keep painting with him?
