God doesn't write in blue.

You know how sometimes you just need something new? I felt that way recently, and fought it. I don't want to be a person who needs things.  I mean, aside from food and shelter and clothing and baths and sugar.  But like the chickenpox virus, it would go dormant for a while, but it was still there. Niggling.

Fortunately for me and my bank account, my nigglings aren't for new cars or boats or designer anything. No, when I crave a new thing, it is most often pens. But not just your every day Bic, the fun brightly colored pens that normal people wouldn't use for business.

So, alas, I made an emergency chapstick stop the other day and found my way back to the school supply aisle, when what to my wondering eyes should appear but an 18 pack of fancy pens. Get this: neons, glitters, and metallics.

The fact that they're writing implements delights the writer in me, even though said writer would be better served with a multi-colored keyboard cover. And the brilliant array of sparkle and shine appeals to the six year-old in me.  Buckley likes them too.

I wonder if God gets that way sometimes. He just wants something shiny and new and brilliant and superfluous.  I mean, scientists are still discovering new species. This year they've found new Indonesian owls, Papua New Guinean shellfish, and spiders in South Africa. The owl is pretty exciting.

Obviously God could have, and I have no doubt did, create many a species long ago that we people just haven't discerned until now. But I wonder if also, just for his glory on an average Friday, he speaks a new creature into being.  If it flips out humans, so be it.  Creator is part of his nature, so the ongoing exercise of the aspect of God shouldn't be unexpected. He makes new stars--God likes sparkly things, too--so to add animals to his world that will make it more intriguing, beautiful and vast seems very much like him.

While I don't necessarily feel the need to justify my new pens, it does remind me in a very tiny way of God's bounty. He is not a minimalist or an industrial engineer. He's not an economist bent on shaving out the excess. He doesn't write in blue ink. No, he's lavish and rich and loves to surround himself with beauty and vibrance. It is an aspect I often overlook, and yet am so grateful to benefit from.

Thank you, Jesus, for being abundant and generous, and loving variety and color and texture and shape and plenty. Thank you for new owls, for colored pens, for colors in general. You are vast and creative and the more I know of you the more I want to know.  All my love.