Lynn Story Downham is a fourth generation artist who returned to North Carolina in 2014 after twenty-six years on the Florida panhandle. Her seventh family tree commission was for a “family tree for Jesus.” Twenty years later she is a born-again believer with a best-selling print, a beautiful family and a passion for sharing Christ through her art. Find out more on Facebook by looking up “Lynn Story Downham’s Art” or “Lynn Downham Jesus Tree.”
SIMPLER PURSUIT By Lynn Downham
What comes to your mind when asked for your favorite summertime activities? If someone asks me, swimming would be on the top of the list, whether it’s in a sparkling clean man-made pool or a beautiful natural creek or spring. Another of our family’s summertime favorites is attending several of the exciting festivals held during the warm weather, sometimes as a vendor and sometimes just for pure enjoyment. While we might be able to find somewhere to swim this year, our fun festivals will have to wait until fall or even next year. Hopefully, we will all be able to enjoy a few family get-togethers this summer and play and laugh with friends. I am certain that we, as Christians, have discovered that there are blessings to be had even in this pandemic valley we find ourselves in. Time for prayer, time for being in the Word, time with our precious families,
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and time for all those home projects that we can never seem to find time to accomplish. Nature, too, is such a gift from God to us. It surrounds us in the sun, moon, and stars in the sky, the breeze that blows your curtains in the morning, the birdsong that is present even at night, but which you look forward to hearing when you open your windows every morning. So too, are clouds, a gift I mean. When was the last time you watched them with your children or your mate? Finding shapes in the clouds is a low cost, relaxing, and imaginative activity. The North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem even has a “cloud watching lounge” on its campus, which is a bunch of quilts laid out on the ground and a sign!
