I saw the scene in this illustration, clear as clear, in a waking interlude in the middle of last Sunday night. On Monday I juiced up my tiniest technical pen and drew it as an aid to remembrance for me and a possible help to anyone else who might forget the basic truth it depicts.

We are, each and every one of us, deeply loved by God. And on some level or other, we forget it, or fail to see the clear evidence in front of us. We walk past/ignore/misread/despise the evidence of His love on an hourly basis, every day of our lives.

The signs of it in Nature, I sometimes reason, don't count because they're there for everybody, for pity sake, and so are not aimed specifically at me, me, me. Faulty reasoning, because nobody else sees exactly what I see. For instance: twenty years ago I walked my dog on a winter morning. Out in the woods, by the canal, with a fresh snowfall on the ground and a mist in the air. The sun was just up and sunlight hit the ice on the trees, making them glitter and somehow surrounding them with a mist that was, I swear, pink. No one else saw it--I didn't have my camera with me--and the scene was so beautiful I could hardly take in the exquisite gorgeousness of what I was seeing. All I could do was thank God, and remember it. So I did, and I do. I felt so loved.

"The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth His handiwork."-Psalm 19:1

Sometimes it all comes clear, and the world is transformed by the clarity.

The style of this drawing is homage to three of my favorite illustrators: Ernest Shepard, Erik Blegvad, Peter Spier. (See illustrations below.) Their styles inspired me for decades, and their work encourages me.