Leaving San Angelo, we headed west across Texas.  Good thing we have GPS!  We entered our destination and she responded, “Stay straight on this road for the next 100 miles.”  We could have gotten lost out there!

We drove and drove and drove.  I drove for awhile during lunch.

We experienced a beautiful, dramatic sky at the close of day in Albuquerque, New Mexico where we spent the night.

Then we continued west into Arizona, stopping to experience the Petrified Forest and Painted Desert.  They have existed for over 10,000 years.

 

You can see the logs and pieces of the petrified wood from the forest still remain scattered about the land.  Within that wood you could see an incredible array of colors.

The artist in me found this absolutely fascinating and exciting.  It was like God’s palette of paints with a million colors, all found in the vastness of creation and also within a single tree.  It made me think about the myriad of shades of color present for us to enjoy every day.  Yet we so often label these colors simply green, red, blue, yellow, etc…the basic colors.  We confine and limit our experience of color.  This reminded me of a painting by Patsy Lindamood entitled, “Don’t Fence Me In”.

Look at all the shades of color just within his face.  Even more, look at his expression!  I wonder how much our experiences are narrowed and limited because we have not looked or listened closely enough to all that God has created. We tend to “fence God in.”

One thing I have learned about God…there is always more!  A million colors within one seemingly dead tree…who would have imagined such beauty?  “God is able to do abundantly more than we can ask or even imagine…”  Ephesians 3:20

nk