Details

Marvin James Leister, 2009, High Diver!







When admiring a beautiful piece of art, what makes us look at it and study it intently, Detail!

The small defining elements the Artist works into his creation, pulling all together, to make a whole that adeptly captures our interest!

With out detail we might glimpse but ultimately we would pass right by because it would simply blend in with everything else !

Our youngest son , Marvin, loved “I Spy books” when he was young ! If you have never seen these books and I will bet you have, they consist of a series of large colorful pictures with a conglomeration of items all set out in a seemingly order less pattern.

His fascination with these books, was that in all their plethora ( there’s that word again) of items, he had to find one or two, as instructed. It took an attentive eye for detail to accomplish the task. Quite spellbinding for a inquisitive young mind.

Marvin loves a challenge, and as a 4 & 5 year old he would sit for hours navigating through the chaos, finding the designated objects!

Coming and setting the book up on the kitchen counter, so that I could see it, no matter what I might be doing! He would challenge me, “ Come Mom, look with me, help me find ….” Oh, how I miss those childhood days, Marv!!

Proverbs 25:2 “ It is the Glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings.”

God has set forth truths we must search for and be diligent to find even in a world filled with so much distraction and obscurity!

Our children’s lives can go by with out any definition, everything running together as if all had the same distinction and value!

We must give them an eye for detail so that they will seek out these truths, changing their perspective from looking at the whole picture to looking for God in the picture!

There was another series of books that were similar that Marvin also enjoyed! The “ Where is Waldo” books! Instead of finding a particular object in a menagerie of others, you had to find a funny character name “ Waldo”, of course, as he travel through different back drops!

The thing about these books was, as soon as your mind became familiar with the details of Waldo’s form, your eyes would instinctively be able to quickly pick apart the picture to find him.

In the beginning my eyes would see him 1st, being more practiced at picking out detail but it wasn’t long before Marvin was triumphantly pointing Waldo out to me!

Once we found him, when ever we would return to this picture, the figure of Waldo stuck out like “sore thumb” ( a term my mother used) ! Basically we could not look at the picture with out seeing Waldo, our minds would ask us “ Now, how did I ever not see him there? “

Proverbs 8: 17 says “ I love those who love me and those who seek me find me!”

God is visible to those looking for Him and when we finally recognize Him in every backdrop of our lives, we will never again loose sight of Him!

We begin pointing Him out to our children but soon they are pointing Him out to us!

As I look at my work of Art ( my motherhood ) I am reminded of a Artist I once admired, Bev Doolittle, she painted beautiful western art scenes.
If you looked at the scene long enough, you realized the fascinating details she was able to bring out in her paintings revealed, a picture with in the picture!

I pray that as we apply His details, the Master is shinning through our Masterpieces!

John 17: 20 “ My prayer is not for them alone, I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” NIV Loving The Father, Phyllis Leister

Helpmates

Horace Leister, Eldoret, Kenya  2010

I married this great man, I love, Horace Leister June 7, 1975!

God created the earth, gave dominion over his beloved creation to the man he created in His own image, that he may rule, but he did not want one man he wanted men. In fact commanded this! ( Genesis 1:28)

God could cause men to spring up from the stones, as He told Moses on the mountain but God did not want men of stone but a family made in His own image, so He gave man a helpmate to accomplish this.

Have you ever run in a 3 legged race?

Marriage can be kind of like that, in the natural. It takes the full strength of both participants to get from point A to Point B, let alone win the race!
If you fall, each participant can lay there and blame the other but in all truth, unless you both get up and try again you are out of the race.

Thank God marriage is more binding than a short piece of rope at the thigh and ankle.

When I looked up the word “ helpmate”, I found “ wife “ as the primary definition.

Helpmate, literally means the one who comes up under their partners arm pit and carries them, if need be, as far and as long as is required.

While being our partners support, our husbands arm is covering us with God’s mandate, to forsake all else and others for a relationship of oneness with us, his helpmate. Genesis 2:24

Even after Horace and I made decisions to follow Jesus Christ as our savior, our marriage resembled the 3 legged race, for sometime, thankfully we did not give up on it and would pull each other up and try again.

Eventually God brought us to the point where we were willing to see marriage as He sees it, a supernatural state of being. Two lives flowing together to make one with the help of Holy Spirit. Not two separate lives tied together awkwardly.

Partly this took place because of a prayer Horace began to pray for me, his helpmate, the mother of his children.

You can read this prayer in Proverbs 31:10-31. “ These are the sayings of King Lemuel-an oracle his mother taught him” NIV Describing a wife and mother with the character qualities to raise up kings and queens.

We are in the possession of kings and Queens in the making. Just as king Lemuel’s mother was. As we have said all along here “ Superior works of Art, envisioned in the heart of The King of Kings!"

When presenting a work of Art, the Frame makes all the difference, it is really what can catch the eye.

God showed me as I was writing this how our character as wives in relationship with our husbands as there helpmates is the frame work needed for our labor of love, motherhood.

Let us close our eyes and envision the frame that would give our masterpiece the best presentation to bring Glory to our King and Father God.

A note for mothers with out husbands, God has promised to never leave us or fore sake us. He is our Husband and the Father to our children. Psalm 68:5 “ A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, Is God in his holy dwelling.” NIV

Loving the Father! Phyllis Leister

Words, the strokes of our brush!

My husband Horace Leister and our daughter Jessice Leister Movius!


Another form of artistry I have always enjoyed is the art of words.

Our eldest daughter Jessica helped mold this love in me! She took my passion for words and ran with it! Reading one of her favorite books, the dictionary as a small girl,she would try all the teasures she found out on us her family! Teaching us the proper pronounciations & definitions!

Jess, you defined my motherhood by being our 1st born and you continue to strech & clarify my life with the quality of yours! Thank you, I love you!

I learnt to read at age 6 or 7! Words captured me and I became a instant reader! I was and always have been captivated by their ability to do likewise for the writer what the empty white canvas does for the painter! An unrestrainable thrill of creation!

We learn by sight and sound 26 symbols referred to as vowels & consonants! Placing these together in a plethora ( this just means " a lot " but it is fun to read, isn't it?) of ways, you can form every word in the English language!

With these words we put the brush to the canvas and out leaps the literature that empowers our minds to transport us anywhere, be anyone and do anything! An unending source of adventure and fulfillment, for me anyway!

Words can be as definitive as a quick tiny stroke of yellow, representing a single Lilly in a massive field of color exaggerated flowers or as broad as the slow deliberate strokes of red/orange that spread themselves across the width of our canvas producing an illusion of the sun just lost behind the ridge!

I truly did read the Bible at age 9! I was compelled! I had just spent the entire summer of my 3rd grade year, memorizing portions of it!

Sunday School was not a place I got to often but when I did, they were always reading the Bible! I just had to have a copy of that beautiful Black Leather bound text and read what all the fuss was about!

A Baptist Church was offering just such a opportunity, so I joined the group of children that came together to learn and earn such a prize! At the end of the summer, we would each present our memorization's before the congregation and receive, what I was coveting most, at that time, a book called the Bible!

The amazing part of this story is, I got sick at the end of the summer, real sick! I had my tonsils removed and spent a couple weeks in bed! I could not stand up with the rest of the children and recite, there for completing my task to earn my Bible. Do You know what I found out?

God wanted me to have that Bible too! Our Sunday School Teacher brought it to me anyway! It opened the Kingdom of God and began for me a unprecedented life journey! It has taken me years but I have found out what all the fuss is about! Have you?

God led men to write, that word’s are capable of bringing life or death! Proverbs 18:21

He used them to create the world and everything in it, “ then God said “, Genesis1:3

Also inspired, the Apostle John wrote about Jesus, relating to Him as the WORD! John 1:1

Spoken or written, words are pretty powerful artistic tools, if you ask me!

When mothering we need to use words carefully, tempered with Godly wisdom! Our efforts are labors of love applied to living masterpieces, first envisioned in the mother heart of Father God!

When dipping our brushes for the next stroke, we want to make sure it is 1st soaked in oil, provided by God's precious Holy Spirit, a dry brush does not draw paint well and may damage our canvas.

How is it looking?

Loving the Father! Phyllis Leister