Popular Posts

Wednesday, 1 September 2021

Painting by Number

 

A cylindrical package sits propped in the window ledge, awaiting my attention. It was a birthday gift, a paint-by-number canvas. When completed, it will recreate a photo of my two eldest children, playing in the backyard of my childhood home in Long Beach. Happy memories of happy days.

It’s been waiting since April, as summer gardening and activities took over. Now I’m looking forward to doing it.

I am no artist. But my sister and I spent hours of together time in our bedroom in Long Beach, working on various masterpiece paint by numbers. My mother still has two of them on her wall: a Rembrandt and a Gainsborough. Happy memories of happy days.

I am not gifted to paint a recognisable picture free-hand. But I can paint within the lines.

God has created a canvas of my life. He knows the way I should live, the attitudes I should have, the choices I should make, to bring out a perfect picture. I have not always lived within the lines. I have slopped over some slightly, and pushed the boundaries of others in a major way. But our Father is a dynamic creator, who never scrunches up or discards anyone. As I return to him, he cleans up the mess I have made. At the end of my life, whatever I am will be a partnership of his design and my execution of it.

He makes everything beautiful in its time. I can trust him with the finished product, knowing that even if my life has become a piece of abstract art, in his eye I am beautiful, and he loves me all the same. Don’t we have an amazing God?

No comments:

Post a Comment