Tuesday With Teri

          A while back I heard a devotion that just keeps replaying in my mind lately.   My friend, Ron, shared about watching a guy on television who was teaching the joy of painting.  Maybe you’ve seen it before…a guy with a rather large tuft of curly hair, the stage set only with an easel and his paints, he masterfully uses brushes and spatulas to spread thick oil paints over a barren canvas.  Before your eyes what was once blank and without form becomes a colorful image of an outdoor scene, usually mountains, trees or oceans and streams.  It is mesmerizing to see him work; he makes it look effort less.

          Ron said he was enjoying watching him create a beautiful painting of mountains and forests.   Just as he assumed the painter was almost done with his painting the artist took a big glob of dark oil paint and plopped it smack in the middle of the canvas, “what you go and do that for?” he wondered.  Why would he ruin a perfectly delightful painting?  Then he watched as the artist worked the glob of paint into a tree of some kind, it was a perfect finish to his painting.

          How often does God work like that in our lives?  Maybe everything looks fine and we feel like He is done with us, only to find a big “glob” of change tossed into our lives.  It makes us question our God and wonder what he could be thinking.  But just like this painter, our God does not toss “globs” into our lives without purpose.  He has a plan. He has a final picture already designed and being formed in our lives since before our first breath. 

“And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” Romans 8:28

God, not only knows our big picture, He is lovingly plopping on all the necessary globs of paint!