Monthly Archives: August 2012

An Old Sitka

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Sitka Center for Art & Ecology at Cascade Head on the Oregon Coast
Class: “Writing the Image, Drawing the Text”
Instructor: Sarah Rabkin
August 22, 2012
My assignment was to wander around outside taking pictures with an imaginary camera. A small empty frame of an old 35 mm slide was my viewfinder and my brain provided a couple gigs of memory. After my photo shoot, I was to head back to the studio and sketch and write what resonated the most in my mind.
Off I went in search of something grand and broad and profound. I wanted a tiny framed glimpse of an ocean too wide to comprehend and too deep to plumb. I held the little frame close to my eye seeking the perfect panorama.
Along the way to the vista, I passed a great Sitka Spruce and its sweet spicy fragrance stopped me in my tracks. I breathed in the aroma, and it sank into the deep crevices of my soul. The breeze through its great boughs whispered a soothing peace over my heart. The sight and sounds and fragrance of the spruce washed over me. I approached the towering ancient and held a fleshy palm to the rough mosaic of its grey bark. I was dwarfed next to the giant. For more decades than I have drawn breath, the old Sitka has stood watch over the Pacific from Cascade Head.
Something quietly settling carried me away, and I found grandeur in two cones hanging together, one above the other, from a branch twirled with stiff blue green needles. The sunlight illuminated the right side of the cones creating a rich reddish brown glow. Each wavy scale was bright and warm against the darker center of the cone. I held the viewfinder to my eye, framed the cones and took a mental picture.
I search for majesty is the greatest broadest places, and rush past the splendor hidden away in the small cones of the Sitka Spruce. The Creator puts His majesty in the smallest cone, the single spruce needle and in the sighs of its boughs as the breeze stirs its branches. And so, God has placed His majesty in the smallest detail of my life. Nothing escapes His notice and His care. Nothing is plain and mundane when God inhabits it.

And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Matthew 10:30

Absolutely Never

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Blessed are they whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will never count against him.                     Romans 4:7, 8
Over 2,000 years ago, Jesus Christ poured out His life and died to erase every single sin that I would ever commit in my short span of earth life. Then one day in 1960, He called me to Himself and my young faith wrapped around His forgiveness. He placed His seal of ownership on my soul and deposited His endless righteousness into my eternal account. I stood on little legs of faith before His throne just as if I lived His perfect life and never sinned at all—because Jesus was punished for my sins just as if He committed them all.
The record of my sin has been cleared and wiped clean with the cleansing agent of the blood of Christ. He does not keep a sin score or tally them and remind me, “Well, that’s the 873rd time today.” Nor is He disappointed when I stumble again and yet again. Instead, He sings over me with joy all day every day.
He has never left my side even when the days were dark and I lost sight of Him. I am fully persuaded that nothing today or tomorrow or anything I do or don’t do will ever separate me from Him.
On that day in 1960, all my sin was removed from the account of my soul and the Lord will never…not ever…will absolutely never count any of them against me. Not even those I will commit between today and my final day of breath. I am forever forgiven. And when I finally get to see Him face to face, He will sing me a song of welcome home.
Oh, what grace. What overwhelming and undoing grace! I am Yours…forever Yours.
The words “it was credited to him” were written not for him [Abraham] alone, but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness—for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead.He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.                                                                             Romans 4:23-25