God’s Detailed Artwork
God’s Detailed Artwork
One of the reasons I so love my artwork is that often God uses it to surprise me with some flash of insight, some fresh way of looking at His Word.
That happened to me recently when I was working on a rendering of the face of the virgin Mary for a Christmas design. She had to look like a young Jewish peasant, but I wanted to depict her in such a way that her royalty and nobility would shine right out of her face.
I gathered all kinds of photos of young Jewish women. I pored over fashion magazines to scrutinize cheekbones. I experimented with cool and hot and warm pinks. I even did a study of eyebrows. Then came revision after revision, erasure after erasure, test after test. I put Mary’s face through everything, trying to attain the perfect, the ideal, the best rendering for the final painting.
Now, it’s easy to set aside sketches I care little about or ideas that don’t really excite me. I can even endure a slight mistake or two. But when I get truly excited about a piece, believe me, it gets bruised and battered with erasures and revisions. I push that rendering until it’s just what I envision.
I’m convinced God deals with us in the same way.
For us to ask God to leave us alone or stop refining us, is to ask Him to love us less, not more.
Many of us think God “unloving” when He puts us through the test, pulling and pushing us, changing us into that complete idea of who He wants us to be. Could it be we’re only considering a single dimension of His love—say, kindness, or gentleness—blowing it up as if it were the whole thing?
God’s love is wider and deeper than that. It embraces constructive criticism, admonishment, correction, and spurring a person to do his or her best. If by love we mean keeping another from suffering or discomfort, then we say that God is not always loving. Neither is a doctor who sticks a needle into the bottom of a crying infant.
We are the objects of God’s profound love and attention. Don’t ask Him to stop perfecting and improving you. God has a final idea in mind and He’s bringing you into completion—through revision after revision, erasure after erasure, sketch after sketch.
By doing that, He’s not loving you less. Believe me, He’s loving you more.