Creative Tuesdays - Under the Leaves - Growing Through God's Word

Creative Tuesdays – Under the Leaves

Under-the-Leaves

I hope you have patience to work through with me as I was given this prompt of “Under the Leaves”.

I will admit when I first read “Under the Leaves” as a prompt for Creative Tuesdays, I thought of the bunnies that our little dog, Snowball, chases every time we go for a walk. I thought of the shade in the summer when we sit under our tree.

But then I thought of the leaves of a book.

So I thought I would talk about the pages of the Bible. It was to be “Under the leaves of the Bible”. I have joined an online Internet radio station and am a contributor once a week. The station is called HopeStreamRadio.com. I hope you check it out. My friends, Ron Hughes, Stephanie Nickel and Kimberley Payne are all involved. My talk is called Growing Through God’s Word. My program runs on Tuesdays. Each week I talk about how God teaches me through His Word.

I didn’t always feel that way. The Bible was just a book on my shelf, seldom opened and needed dusting. I might open it to check out a crossword puzzle solution or answer a question if it came up in discussion. One time when I was very sick I read the Psalms. That worked very well. But studying the Bible – No.

What have I found under those leaves?

Here are just some of the things I have found:

wisdom
insight
passion
people
peace
release from fear
guidance,
history
life changes
conviction
truth
eternal life through Jesus

Under those leaves lives a pattern for life with God’s Holy Words ever true. It reminds me of the song Ancient Words.

Here is the YouTube video of Robin Mark singing this song.

Ancient words
Ever true
Changing me
Changing you.

Here is another video for my Canadian family sung by Michael W. Smith.

When I hold the Bible I hold God’s history and God’s people in my hands – a sacred, mighty, powerful book.

Have you looked under the leaves of the Bible?

As I said, I started to look at the leaves of the Bible – then I wondered if there were God’s words about “leaves” in the Bible. There were!!

Revelation 22:2 says:

and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.

I found a most interesting post written in 1855 by Milo Mahan, entitled The Leaves of the Tree are for the Healing of the Nations. It is not an easy read and I want to go back and really read more deeply into his message.

Here is what I found interesting:

Each generation has its own work … to do, its own trials to meet, its own resources to develope [sic], its own account to give to the Judge and Maker of us all. ….

The Tree of Life was designed to be a shelter against all evils. Its leaves are specifics for national disease.

If you check back to a post a wrote on deceivers it looks as though this writing was a prophetic message – each generation has a work to do. So my prayer is that we pray for God to show us how to do it.

So that is my round-about mental process of figuring out “Under the Leaves”.

Thank you so much for Michael at Creative Tuesdays for giving us this creative exercise. I am not that happy with the watercolour I did – but I didn’t copy anything – just drew as I felt led.

The exercise has been meaningful to me – knowing that the Tree of Life is covering me through trials, despair, joy and inspiration. All those leaves from ancient days until now, are they the saints before us and around us?

Blessings,
Janis