What Was Hidden

The Story

Twice a year, for only about a week at a time, something remarkable appears on the Superstition Mountains. 

As the sun reaches just the right position in the spring and fall, light and shadow move across the mountain and a cougar emerges.

Once you see him, you can't unsee him.

His body stretches across the rugged face of the mountain, and if you look closely, you'll discover something else-he isn't alone.  Just ahead of him is the shape of his prey, as though the cougar has been frozen in pursuit within the rock itself.

I wanted to capture that fleeting phenomenon in What Was Hidden, an oil painting on a 16 x 20 board.

For most of the year, the mountain keeps its secret.

Then the light changes-and suddenly, what was hidden is revealed.

Reflection

The mountain is always there.

So is the cougar.

It is only when the light falls in exactly the right place that we are able to see what had been there all along.

I think God gives us moments like that in our own lives.

There are things we don't understand while we're walking through them.  Pieces we can't quite see. Then something changes-a little light reaches a place that had been in shadow-and suddenly we can see what we couldn't see before.

Perhaps not everything hidden is meant to remain hidden forever.

Sometimes we simply have to wait for the light.

Scripture

"He reveals the deep things of darkness and brings utter darkness into the light."

-Job 12:22