A New Canvas

I’m not much of an artist.  In fact I cannot sketch out much more than stick figures on paper.  I can decorate, paint walls and organize a home which is an art form, but drawing is not my thing. My brother actually got that gene and is quite good at penciling out a cartoon and he has some nice art he did while studying for his degree at Georgia Tech. Stick figures are okay I guess, but just not very entertaining and their expressions are little more than thin emoticons. 

I often look at life as one big canvas and for me my canvas is often the calendar. I think in arenas of quarters or seasons and then map out a year.  I love to plan and try to orchestrate life around what I know is ahead.  I’m not quite sure why I’m like that.  I have kept a calendar since as long as I can remember and I have them saved away so I can prove it. Of course there have been hard and difficult years or seasons and thankfully many good ones. I love to get my new calendar and mark all the birthdays and anniversaries and things I know will happen circling holidays in color marking New Year’s, Valentines, Easter, Memorial Day, July 4 and such with appropriate holiday color.  Then I get a little more detailed on events that surround work and travel, I try to think ahead to when a vacation would be possible and mark that in pencil.  Then in pencil I also mark ahead to remember someone’s birthday or their passing away day so that I don’t forget to be sensitive to those days for someone else.

This has been my habit at the end of every year.  In some ways it’s very reassuring and reminds me of days or years gone by and comforts me that things are mostly the same. It becomes a canvas of my life...all the comings and goings and doings.

One year I ruined my canvas.  I tossed paint on the board and spilled it all over the floor. I was angry and rebellious and I turned my back on all that I knew and loved.  I left everything to follow an idol in my heart and I left a huge gaping hole in the calendar and all things familiar.  I destroyed relationships cut people and God out of my life.  The canvas was ruined, stained and un-salvageable. At least that is what I thought, and so did many others.

Now God is an amazing artist.  His landscapes, sunsets, sunrises, waterfalls, seasons and mountaintops bespeak of a master painter with an eye for detail in color, placement and timing.  His artwork is not only found in nature, but in people’s lives.  He can make shy people bold, he can make the prideful humble, he can make joy out of sadness and tenderly bring life back to one filled with grief.  His handiwork can take our breath away if only we will look with eyes to see.

After my disaster in the art room, the creator of the universe quietly and gently took my canvas and placed a fresh new one in its place. He mopped up the spattered paint on the floor and set the canvas stand by an open window with different hues from the sunlight. His heart of love removed my hand from the paintbrush and he started a new work of art and he turned a heart of stone into a heart of flesh.  He is not only a true artist but he excels in music and put a new song in my heart as well.  He removed all the trappings and expectations and disappointments putting one goal before me, to love His Son, Jesus.  He gave me a new family and a new life.  All I have known since is his deep abiding love for me, grace and mercy that completely overwhelm me and I cannot praise or thank him enough. 

Right now the canvas is not finished.  The colors are not dry.  He works daily to show me the shades and colors he is using to paint a portrait of a woman devoted to him.  I sometimes want to advise him on a nice palate that would suit me, but he asks that I trust him with the painting to be fully revealed when I see him face to face.

Occasionally I grab an etch-a-sketch and try a design of my own, all squiggly and off center, but gratefully we can shake it up and down and erase the mess I can make on my own.  I still pull out my calendar and outline the year and plan (it’s who I am), but now I seek his guidance for each facet of our home, life and business.  He fills the edges of the painting with people and friends both near and far.  Then slowly, but surely the image of Christ begins to emerge as the Creator generously fills in the lavish landscape with his loving-kindness and the righteousness of His Son.  My stick figures hardly compare to the master, and my sketches are more like post it notes.   

Rest in his Word today, he is in the business of making all things new… even a ruined canvas.  The Architect of the Universe can mend a broken or hurting life.  He makes all things beautiful.

“So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.  For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal”… “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has gone, the new has come.”