The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening.  It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.
~Henry David Thoreau from Walden

In the beginning was the Word, 
and the Word was with God, 
and the Word was God.
John 1:1

Painting the indescribable with words necessitates subtlety, sound and rhythm.

The best word color portraits I know are by Gerard Manley Hopkins who created pictures through startling word combinations: 

“crimson-cresseted”,
“couple-colour”,
“rose-moles”,
“fresh-firecoal”,
“adazzle, dim”,
“dapple-dawn-drawn”,
“blue-bleak embers”,
“gash gold-vermillion”.

I understand how difficult it is to harvest daily life using ordinary words. Like grasping ephemeral star trails or the transient rainbow that moves away as I approach, what I hold on the page is intangible —
yet nevertheless very real.

I keep reaching for understanding, searching for the best words to share here: those that are ephemeral color yet eternal, and very very real.

After all, in the beginning was the Word, and there is no better place to start with its promise.

I’ll be reading slowly through the words in the Book of John over the next year. Once a week, I will invite you to “come and see” what those words might mean as we explore the promise together.