Tools of the trade

Yours are not like the others.
They lie within,
carried, not in a toolbox
but in your heart,

the ability to see what is not there,
to believe in what can be so strongly
that you create it,
seemingly out of thin air,

like a magician or mage.
There is a power there,
a vision that does not depend on eyes,
or the luke warm promises of others.

but something deeper,
belief. Faith
that God has plans, plans beyond
your ability to see, plans

that defy imagination
and that your job is less
to build the cathedral of love,
than to simply

allow it.

About this poem

One of the lessons I’ve learned in life it that I can make all the plans I like – but God often has other plans. And while his path for me may seem convoluted and involves a timetable that makes no sense at all to me, when I look backward, his plan becomes clearer.

Do I wish he would explain what he has in mind from the start? Dang right I do. But then, that’s part of the adventure. And that’s part of what faith IS. And faith, in the end, is one of the most important tools in life’s toolbox.

The photograph is one that I took yesterday, as I was cleaning up from working on some paintings. Art, like life and love, is as much an act of faith as it is something we do.

Tom