One summer, I was volunteering with an organization that helps children who’ve had very difficult lives. On a hot, southern afternoon the instructor led the kids inside a large classroom filled with painting supplies and large canvasses. However, before the future Picassos got started, we watched an old Bob Ross video. You remember Bob Ross, right? He wins the world’s “Most Calm, Talented, and Cheerful Dude In History” award. Anyway, he made this beautiful painting of a mountain with trees around it during the fall with a massive lake. It was incredible and, I thought, complete.
All of the sudden, though, he puts black paint on his pallet and begins to smear black paint all over the right side of the painting.
All I could think was, “he ruined it! Such a beautiful picture and the dude just totally ruined a great painting!”
I kept watching. I began to see that he had a plan. Slowly the black started to take shape. He added a few more colors that highlighted the dark. I didn’t realize it, but he was actually adding a tree that looked closer to the viewer to help show the enormous magnitude of the mountain and lake in the background.
In the end, the picture was more beautiful and more staggering than before the black paint was applied, though I didn’t understand what he was doing at first. His painting was complete.
I think we often think that way with God. Our lives are going well. Things are fine. Easy breezy.
And then.
Black.
A bad accident. A lost job. A harsh review at work. A lingering sadness. A crappy day.
God is messing it up. He is messing your life up. He is messing you up!
Trust the painter.
It takes time. He’ll add more strokes but eventually he’ll bring beauty out of the blackness. We may not even know what that beauty will be in this life, but we know that the One we trust is Beauty itself and he makes all things new.
And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.
Philippians 1:6
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