As I finished the painting "Like a Child at Home" the song "My Shepherd will Supply My Need" was playing. The third verse reads: The sure provisions of my God

“Attend me all my days; O may Thy house be mine abode, And all my work be praise! There would I find a settled rest, (While others go and come), No more a stranger or a guest, But like a child at home.”

Those closing words: "No more a stranger or a guest, But like a child at home" were the ones that hit me. They say everything.

"Like a Child at Home" is my painting of one of my life's defining moments, when my mom stopped washing dishes to put her warm, soapy hands on my eleven year-old face and tell me she didn't know what she'd do without my help--without me. It's a feeling about how it feels to be loved, and needed-- not just to be with someone, but to belong with them, to truly be home.

Since completing this piece I've searched for songs or books or movies that tell this story, and as soon as I started looking my eyes were opened and I was able to see it absolutely everywhere. Nearly all of my favorite books, movies, and songs tell it; I've come to believe that it's one of our core human stories. Each of us is a beloved child of God, with a divine longing to go home to Him and to belong there. We get tastes of it here on earth but the fullness of this belonging and going home is yet to come for each of us.

My heart aches when I think of how many of God's children experience little or none of this kind of love and belonging while they are here on earth, how many have even been hurt by those who should have protected and nurtured them; but ALL of my faith centers on this one firm hope: that because of Jesus Christ, every one of us is not only a candidate for this kind of perfect state of belonging and love--we're destined for it. If we don't get to taste it here on earth very much, or at all-- we can live in hope that the belonging that lies in wait for us in our eternal home with This hope winds its way through everything I paint including barns, clouds and trees. Where beauty is, God is, pointing us back to our eternal home with Him and to the peace we long for, beckoning us to come home. The three landscapes I included in the show are landscapes from my home here in Utah. They're more subtle in their storytelling, but their story is the same. Life is supposed to be hard, this sometimes brutal struggle is a gift of inestimable worth and is our chance to learn, to grow, and to be changed through Christ from selfish to unselfish beings. I know thee "No more a stranger or a guest, But like a child at home."