I’ve been painting as a trade for a number of years now. Even if you are on a crew, sooner or later you will find yourself alone...just you, a paintbrush and God. Some of my greatest God moments have come out of these times. By nature I am energetic and on the move...something is always going full speed ahead whether it be my mind or body, otherwise I’m asleep. When my body is busy my mind is at rest, and when my mind is busy my body is at rest. Thus I find it much easier to hear what God is saying when I’m doing mindless busy work (the auto pilot stuff like showering, washing dishes, driving, and painting) as I’m not clogging my brain up with my own thoughts. The not so great part about that is, my hands are a little too busy to write it all down in the moment. (High fives to the guy who created the talk to text feature.) So without further adieu here’s the highlights from my last “painting session with the Master”.
A little bit of light and a different shade of color really changes what we see. Many times in the painting business, we can’t see a wall’s imperfections until we put a different coat of paint on the wall or shine a bright light on it. In the dark, we can’t see what’s wrong to fix it, but shine some light and things get a lot clearer. Once the lighting is good, we can fix what is visible. Next in the process is a coat of paint. Often with the new color, more imperfections pop up that we missed the first time around because of the way the new color absorbs or reflects the light.
Funny thing is life is fairly similar. The way I see it, we are just like these walls I paint...full of imperfections. Over time we get bumped and scratched; at times there are gaping holes to be patched from a poorly negotiated boundary; some areas might need some filling and sanding or even a redesign to function properly. But just like these walls, we can’t even see what’s wrong until we are introduced to the light (Jesus). Likewise, we go through many colors in life as well. The colors can range from dull, to dark and piercing, to bright and cheery, or even calming bringing relief to our soul. The light looks different depending on the color at the time. Regardless, with each new color, something different is brought to the surface to fix as we didn’t see it before in that light.
All this light shining and color changing in our lives I’m convinced God certainly orchestrates. It’s not to point out our wrongs to make us feel guilt and shame but instead to bring things to light so we can be our very best. After all, how could we ever see the imperfections to fix them, without the light? And how would we find what needs fine tuning if we didn’t have different colors highlighting them? Its God’s love that He walks with us through all the different lightings and shades this life brings. And in His grace and mercy He doesn’t illuminate them all at once. Otherwise we might have half a mind to just tear the wall down and start over. And what kind of hope would that give to all the walls still standing if a tear down was the only way? None. We need every wall there is, in the phase it’s in, to do exactly what it was made to do...to stand and be a testament of what it is in that moment. Just as painters are pretty skilled at this fixing wall business...God’s pretty skilled at this fixing people business (He should be. He created them.) Maybe, just maybe, we should trust Him a little more with what He’s good at and stick to what it is we are good at. After all it would look pretty silly if that wall told me what I needed to do to fix it. Don’t you agree? Just about as silly as it must look to God when we say we know better than Him.
