Wake Up to Wonder: 22 Invitations to Amazement in the Everyday a 5-Day Reading Plan by Karen Wright MarshSýnishorn

Day Two: Reach Out—Look to See

Scripture: Psalm 19:1-4, 24:1, Job 12:7-10

Lilias Trotter (1853–1928) was an exceptional artist who fully embodied a way of seeing God’s world around her, an earth where Trotter found that “even the commonest things put on a new beauty.” As a young woman, Lilias studied painting with the eminent John Ruskin. Then, at thirty-four, Lilias stepped away from the path Ruskin imagined for her and followed the unexpected call of God to live out the gospel in Algeria, abandoning the wealthy, comfortable life of an accomplished artist in England, despite frail health, others’ disapproval, and no knowledge of Arabic; even she acknowledged it to be a fool’s errand. Lilias loved the people and landscapes of North Africa from the start and ministered there until her death at age seventy-five.

Her commitment to evangelism did not diminish her dedication to art. Early on she wrote, “Oh, how good it is that I have been sent here to such beauty!” And no matter the daily demands of teaching, prayer, and service, her artist’s impulse to see and to create endured. On the pages of her notebooks, we often find the phrase posing the question, “Have you ever noticed . . . ?” Lilias invites you and me to awaken our attention and see the world we inhabit.

“Many things begin with seeing in this world of ours,” the attentive artist remarks. Lilias Trotter did not paint out of nostalgia, diversion, or self-discipline. Rather, in lucid colors, she created a record of her spiritually saturated apprehension, of invisible glory threaded through the visible. God was revealed to her everywhere. “The desert is lovely in its restfulness,” she writes in wonder. “The great brooding stillness over and through everything is so full of God.”

You too possess the capacity to pay close attention to what is before your eyes. God’s invitation to know Him more deeply through creation’s beauty is always with us: “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good,” (Genesis 1:31).

Lilias Trotter often wove Scripture verses into her illustrations. Choose a blank piece of paper of any size. Write out an intriguing Bible verse, line of poetry, or quotation. You don’t need to be an accomplished calligrapher but feel free to add a flourish or two. Here is one of the Scriptures from today’s reading that might inspire you: “Heaven is declaring God’s glory; the sky is proclaiming His handiwork” (Psalm 19:1).