One of the activities in the fourth grade that my kids enjoyed was painting the windows. While studying the rainforest, the students are armed with brushes, and allowed to cover the glass with sprawling green banana leaves, and bromeliads. The results were colorful, to be sure, and it probably felt daring to vandalize school property. Yet it blocked the natural light. Then after a few weeks, the teacher brought out soapy buckets and it was washed away.

A friend told me a story about painted windows. 

God's will for us is picturesque. The view He offers us has depth, employing constancy and change. Tree trunks stand firmly in both sunlight and downpours, winter winds and moonless nights. The leaves are fickle, changing clothes and then whispering away. The landscape is broad, much bigger than the pane. Still the four by eight foot expanse is all I have through which to observe. 

We humans like to embellish life's window with our own images. Opinions about how circumstances should proceed. Judgments around what needs to happen next. Green paint here, yellow dabbed there. Wide swaths of pigment intended to upgrade the actual view. 

Yet our graffiti is not and has never been alive. It cannot respond to the sky, or the geese piercing clouds overhead. In our effort to control God's picture for us, we lose the capacity to see it. 

This morning Benjamin is not doing well. I want our interactions to be different than they are. There is brightness, though, coming through the window. The oaks invite me to believe there is a possibility that is better than my pain.