a day's journey

So I've not only been packing these past few days.  I've been painting, too.  Some time ago I got it in my head that I would like something new, something personal, to hang on our living room wall in CO. For a while I was trying to decide on one of the many photos of the Iowa sky that I've taken over the past year, but I wanted it to be fairly large, and I couldn't justify the large photo canvas prices, even with a Groupon.  Then, after painting at Calvary and packing up several tubes of acrylics, I decided instead that I would take a whack at painting something for our home.  So I spent $20 on Amazon for a 30 x 40 inch canvas, and the past few mornings I've spent the first quiet hour of the day sorting things through and painting.


I think I've painted three things since my grade school days in Mrs. Hunter's art class.  A mural for junior/senior banquet - and that was a joint venture, as several ladies who read this blog will testify! - the Trinity mural, and the Calvary mural.  And I've never painted, made, or created anything that turned out like I had hoped it would.


This piece is no exception - there are things I'd like to change - but it does still do two things that I intended: it moves from tall cornfields in Iowa and across plateaus in western Nebraska to the twin peaks that overlook the place to which we are moving, and it also progresses from sunrise to moonlight.


I entitled it A Day's Journey.

Because it takes about a day to drive from here to there.


But more than that.


Because this transition has caused me to reflect as I never have before on the fleeting nature of my earthly life.  On the temporary nature of most things here below.  On how I long for heaven.


I hear in my head the words of Rev. Haak on the Reformed Witness Hour, several years ago...


Have you already counted the coming year as yours?  Are you looking five years ahead?  God counts in days.  That teaches us the shortness of our human life, especially as it is compared to eternity.  Man thinks that he is forever, that his dwelling places are for generations.  But it is a day.  Infancy is daybreak; youth is sunrise; adult-life is noonday; sickness and arthritis are sunset; old age is evening.  It is but a day.

My life is but a day.


And this move?


But a leg of the journey Home.