Welcome to 10 minute Bible Talks.

Where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work.

I'm Tanya Wilmoth.

One of the most influential books I read this year was Every Good Endeavor by Tim Keller. In the beginning of that book, he retails the short story called Leaf by Niggle, written by J R.R. Toulkin.

Now in Toulkin's story, there's a painter named Niggle, who desperately wants to complete

his vision of painting a beautiful tree before he's called away on a journey.

What we know about literature from this time period is that the journey usually symbolized

death.

Now, Niggle Bata canvas so large that he had to acquire a ladder to begin painting his tree.

He worked firmly, but most of the canvas remained blank with the exception of a beautiful single leaf.

There were two problems other than the upcoming journey that

Negegal dealt with. The first was that Nego was a talented painter of leaves, but

not of trees. The second was that his soft heart often called him away from his

work to meet the demands that other people had of him or things that they

needed, especially his needy neighbor.

Now one evening on the way to fetch a doctor for his neighbor's wife,

he's called away on the journey and Niggle anguishes

over the unfinished work he left on his canvas. However, when he reaches his destination, he

sees his leaf, and it's part of a painting on full display for everyone to see in eternity.

But the tree that he envisioned is also framing the leaf and filling the entire canvas,

and it's even better than he imagined it would be. Do you sometimes feel like all

you're doing is painting a leaf? While everyone around you is painting trees day in and day out.

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