Alone on a Caribbean cruise, I spent hours on the deck observing the intense sea colors of light and dark aqua. While we were navigating the ocean, my artist’s eyes were watching as the white foam connected with the new foam of each following wave. I wanted to be accurate when I painted my seascapes.

As was leaning on the handrail I wondered aloud, “LORD, why do I love the ocean so much?” Many times when I ask Him a question He answers with a question. This time he did not. Instead, He answered me with a simple story, paraphrased here: Most people know you only at the depth of where they play in the shallow water, where they swim, wade, or snorkel. A few people know you at the SCUBA diving depth. But at the greatest and darkest depth, where strange-looking fish emit biofluorescent light, is the depth that I know you. The light that shines from you – is Me.

I was amazed. That was the first time I understood why my paintings were almost always of the ocean, though I lived in the mountains of Colorado. When I was painting the ocean, I was painting my deepest self, not just the superficial part that others saw, but what GOD saw and knew.

The Prophet Jeremiah also understood how God saw him for he wrote what the LORD spoke to him in chapter one verses four through seven. “Then the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, before I formed you in the womb I knew you; and before you were born I separated and set you apart, and I ordained you as a prophet unto the nations. Then I said, ah, LORD God! Behold I cannot speak: for I am a child. But the LORD said unto me, ‘say not that I am a child: for you shall go to all that I shall send you, and whatsoever I command you, you shall speak.’”

Our Creator knows us better than we know ourselves, better than anyone knows us. He knows us from the inside out. Nothing is ever hidden from Him. He loves us just as He created us. Nothing and no one can ever separate us from his abiding love.