Paint and Nectar
Ashley Clark
Top 10 Best Quotes
“What if even then, God had plans for a second garden? Another tree, and another chance to reach out and accept the abundance of life? What if in Eden, God was planning Gethsemane?" The question echoed through Lucy, growing in power with each reverberation within her soul. She held a flower in her hands. The sweet, exotic perfume floated deep into Lucy's heart---carrying Ms. Beth's words right along beside it. Lucy hesitated, allowing the words to take effect. "Are you circling a closed Eden, or have you chosen to step into Gethsemane, through the open gate?" Lucy blinked. She had never thought of it like that. "Maybe what you thought was a closed gate meant to punish you is actually God's way of protecting you from remaining in a place where you won't and can't receive His life." The truth washed Lucy's heart with color. As it brushed over the harsh edges with water, watercolor blooms began to blend one into the other, filling her with understanding. Lucy's heart swelled as the long-dry soil soaked up this water. "Where you're preoccupied with your failures and your fears and the desire to preserve all you might lose, God has a plan to preserve something else. To root you in a place where life can grow within you once more, freely and abundantly. A garden of death for a garden of life, where through His own resurrection Jesus returns all that was stolen.”
“So Eliza walked the path to East Bay Street that summer evening alone, wearing a scoop-neck black dress and her hair in Victory Rolls so that she felt like a dark-haired Ingrid Bergman in that new movie Notorious.”
“If you want to sprout roots, my dear, then tend them carefully. Roses are fragile before they're strong. It's as true for plants as it is for life.”
“A trellis filled with roses arched above the patio, leading to a winding garden path made out of stones that Lucy wanted to skip along. Flowers in reds and pinks and whites and purples bloomed from the curved edges of the yard, so beautiful they reminded Lucy of something out of Eliza's paintings.”
“You thought you could create more indigo, and I understand why you wished it, Eliza, for indigo is the color of bluebirds, the color of the twilight sky. Newton insisted it be added to the colors of the rainbow, and once upon a time, its cousin true blue was such a rare pigment, its price rivaled gold. People have fought wars over indigo crops and used it to bolster and brag of their wealth. Why? All in an attempt to make beauty lasting.”
“What you thought was bound for destruction, I will recover for future generations. I am the God of endless hope, and I will restore the life in these walls. You won't have to look beyond my provision for you. My provision is sufficient. It's beauty and resurrection---a second garden as my resurrection makes way for your own.”
“There are times in life---sometimes, not always---when the water on paper drips with the color of just the perfect hue, until the effect is something so ethereal that the artist knows it must simply be experienced because she can never produce it again. And the color shifts over time, shifts still over sunlight, until the watercolors fade completely back into the paper itself, and all that's left is the memory.”
“The fragrance of the gardenias along the porch carried on the breeze. The blooms were always sweetest from freshly opened buds. But they had to fall, they had to change, for the roots to grow. So that next season, more buds would open, and the fragrance would spread even farther. Gardenias. She had never painted gardenias before. But they bloomed all at once as she'd never noticed them blooming years prior, and the fragrance was so alluring that the smell of it matched the delicate strokes of her smallest paintbrush, and it was the first of May and the first of so many other things, she was sure.”
“The beauty of the garden had inspired her art, her attempts to revitalize and preserve the city and redefine it for new generations. But she never imagined the inverse may also hold true. That her art might come to life. And paint became nectar in a new, beautiful promise.”
“Still, she was struck every time she stepped inside by the many ways that nature continued to bloom. That the bluebirds still nested, and the songbirds remembered how to sing. That the God who cared for the sparrows had fed them another day. This probably should not surprise her, and yet it often did. Faithfulness, provision, and beauty enduring.”
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Book Keywords:
vitality, roots, ingrid-bergman, beauty, endless-hope, birds, tender-loving-care, fashion-style, gethsemane, artwork, endurance, thirties, effective, garden, restoration, watercolors, gardenia, everlasting, indigo, inspiring, painting, gods-plan, renewal, gods-power, color, fragrance, provision-of-god, rare, dream, resurrect, book-title
