Title: Busy Mom

In an interview for Today's Christian Woman, writer and speaker Carol Kent says:

One day when [my son] Jason was young, we were eating breakfast together.  I had an old pair of slacks and a fuzzy old sweater.  He flashed his baby blues at me over his cereal bowl and said, "Mommy, you look so pretty today."

I didn't even have makeup on!  So I said, "Honey, why would you say I look pretty today?  Normally I'm dressed up in a suit and high heels."

And he said, "When you look like that, I know you're going some place; but when you look like this, I know you're all mine."

Beauty is for a child far deeper than one can imagine.  A busyness can be a thief of precious moments.

--copied & edited

Title:  Anamorphosis Art

   The royal portrait looked like a bad joke. It seemed as if the future King of England had been mocked. William Scrots, the court painter, appeared to have done a great injustice to Edward VI. The skull ballooned in back, the forehead bulged, the nose looked like a beak, and the chin undershot the face. But Edward's attitude must have changed when Scrots told him the secret. By squinting at the picture through a peephole in the side of the frame, a fine representation with no deformities could be seen. One who viewed it described Edward as having a "handsomely proportioned countenance." This unusual painting along with about 100 others like it recently toured the country in an exhibit of what is called "anamorphosis art." It's a specific kind of art that can only be appreciated when viewed from one certain vantage point.

   A narrow perspective is also necessary if we are to see the divine design brushed into our lives by God.

   If we judge ourselves by the world's standards we may miss the subtle beauty and purpose God has placed within us.

See:  Prov 20:24; Rom 12:2

Title: Beauty in Smallness

   Matthew Simpson, an American pastor of the 19th century, once visited some of the great buildings of Europe. There he saw mosaics - - pictures made up of small pieces of stone, glass, metal, and shell. Simpson wrote, "The artist takes these little pieces, and polishing and arranging them, he forms them into a grand and beautiful picture. Each individual part of the picture may be a little worthless piece of glass or marble or shell; but, with each in its place, the whole constitutes a masterpiece of art. So I think it will be with humanity in the hands of the great Artist. God is picking up the little worthless pieces of stone and brass that might be trodden underfoot unnoticed, and is making of them His great masterpiece."

See:  Deut 14:2