SIMPLER PURSUIT By Lynn Downham

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.”

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, 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!

I watch clouds. Now I watch them with our daughter and shape finding is a favorite game, but I also watch them for another reason. I like to paint clouds. Very much. I see all the time banks of those big, pouffy cumulus clouds which open to reveal beautiful light on the clouds stretching out behind them. I call the first painting I did on this theme “Heaven’s Gate”, for that is what it looked like to me. I then started a series named, “Heaven Over...”, the first one being “Heaven Over Destin”, the second “Heaven Over Morrison Springs.” Heaven Over Destin was fine, the second was not, so I destroyed it. Whenever I’m driving and see this phenomenon, I try to pull over and take a shot to use later. Cloud painting is fun!

Now I have seen a glory cloud parted and the base of an altar and a column revealed. It was at my third Full Gospel Baptist Church convention in Atlanta, Georgia, (and we were inside a stadium), and I sketched this, but have not painted it. I have talked with a couple who saw the sky clouds parted and glimpsed a beautiful city on the way back home from Charlotte the day that Billy Graham died and I look forward to the pictures that I will be allowed to paint in the future, but for now... I enjoy this time He has given us to spend with Him and His creation!

“Behold, He is coming with clouds, and every eye will see Him, and they also who pierced Him. And all the tribes of the earth will mourn because of Him. Even so, Amen. ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the End,’ says the Lord, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”

Revelation 1:7-8