To come forth, to rise or to come out into view from a place of relative safety, a step forward into the challenges that lie ahead, defines the term. Every day we are called upon to come forth, out of the privacy of our inner self to deal with life, step into the hardness of reality.
Description
To come forth, to rise or to come out into view from a place of relative safety, a step forward into the challenges that lie ahead, defines the term. Every day we are called upon to come forth, out of the privacy of our inner self to deal with life, step into the hardness of reality.
This painting is about that process. The Margay is a creature endowed with some unique qualities that make it among the most elusive and enduring of any jungle dweller. The pattern of its fur blends perfectly with the mottled shades of a tree. Razor sharp, long claws assist it to be a much more skillful climber than its relative, the ocelot and is sometimes called the tree ocelot because of this ability. Whereas the ocelot mostly pursues prey on the ground, the margay may spend its entire life in the trees, leaping after and chasing birds and monkeys through the treetops. Indeed, it is one of only two cat species with the ankle flexibility necessary to climb head-first down trees (the other being the clouded leopard.) It is remarkably agile; its ankles can turn up to 180 degrees. It can grasp branches equally well with its fore and hind paws. Long and sinewy legs allow a margay to jump up to 12 feet horizontally. The margay has been observed to hang from branches with only one foot. In addition to all this, its enormous eyes equip it with extraordinary night vision.
When we consider how God has equipped His creatures to deal with the reality of their environment, their real world, we have to wonder how and why we humans are so vulnerable, so prone to attack and defeat. Or, could it be that we prefer a flashy coat to a mottled one, a super highway and a jump joint to the treetops? Maybe we just don’t like to be where we were designed to be, in the protective covering of God’s grace and mercy, living with His timing and plans as our direction. Then emergence into and grasping on to the reality of life would not so brutal and pointless. We could better handle those times when the last “E” in our emergence becomes a “Y”.
