at close of day

The sunset over the lake was breathtaking tonight.

Sometimes I think we think of God's creativity as having ceased, or abated, at the end of the traditional seven days: As Josh Ritter sings, "He bent down and made the world in seven days / and ever since he's been walkin' away" ("Thin Blue Flame," The Animal Years).

But somewhere in the world, always, every second of every moment in time, God is creating a new sunset, or continuing variations of the first sunset which has never ended but ripples over the globe like blown water, unceasing and mutable, multifaceted and one. And what fun that must be...

Maybe when I get to heaven He'll let me give it a try. Or at least help. "This shade of pink, God, right there...pretty please? Can I?"

And maybe it would turn out terribly, but I think God would pin it up somewhere on heaven's version of a refrigerator and smile at it fondly as something His little girl did for Him, like a smudgy botched handprinted fingerpaint drawing depicting nothing but the extravagance of a child's love.

Maybe that's how He views a lot of our attempts at being pleasing and good.