So this past week we tried a new thing as a team…
We painted for worship! Now, I’m not super artistic or anything but I like coloring and doodling and I was excited when Nikki organized this for us (who, by the way, spent her OWN MONEY for us to do this!). So, with worship music playing in the background, we were paired up (I was with Val!), given a canvas to split, and told to go for it.
Now the idea behind this is that when you pray and meditate and just talk/listen to God, He will give you a picture to paint. I really love the intent behind this and the creativity that this activity in particular inspires because, though we may not all be artists, we were created by the most ingenious artistic mind there ever was and He loves it when we get out of our comfort zones for Him.
I’ve been attempting/practicing this kind of prayer since I first learned about it at training camp in October (i.e. asking God for an image) but I don’t think I’ve ever got an image that was explicitly from Him. So when I sat down in front of my canvas, closed my eyes and started talking to Him, it wasn’t with the expectation that He would show up. It was more like “okay God I really hate this ‘cause you literally NEVER talk to me this way but it’d great if you did this time so I don’t have a blank canvas or a generic flower painting”.
And I know God has a sense of humor ‘cause who else would I have gotten mine from? Anyways, He did not give me any image and I wasn’t really surprised because I didn’t really expect Him to and that’s on me. We should always expect Him to show up and show out. So I was frustrated but I just started painting. I did a little stripe of blue in the left-hand corner and then a little stripe of green right next to it because that’s my favorite color so it obviously has to be in the picture, and then I realized I was on my way to painting a rainbow and that was elementary (even though my finished product didn’t turn out much better than elementary lol). So I took another shade of blue and scribbled over top of those colors.
I didn’t really think much about what I did from there, I just kept painting at what I thought was random. Slowly my dark blob in the corner got lighter and I was like, “Maci, you should paint a sun”. So opposite of my indistinguishable blob was an awkwardly placed sun. At this point my creation made no sense whatsoever and so I became more frustrated.
I sat back and looked at what I had done, contemplating just quitting before I made it any worse, though how I could possibly do that I have no idea. I watched Val as she sat peacefully just painting away like it was the most natural thing in the world and I thought “I should see what everyone else is doing and maybe that will help me finish mine” but I distinctly remember, right after that thought came “no, you don’t need to let what others are doing influence what you are doing”. Up until this moment, writing this blog, I didn’t understand the implications of that thought. I was just like “Maci, it’s painting as worship. You can’t do it wrong so just do it”. So I made my sun stretch and touch the outer limits of the blob, ultimately turning it into sunlight touching darkness.
I had an epiphany and ran with it. And though I couldn’t portray the image I ultimately got from God (here’s the humor I was talking about) as adequately as I would’ve liked to, I am still rather pleased with how it turned out (mine is on the bottom):
His light breaks through and redeems my darkness. There’s no shadow He won’t light up coming after me. He is jealous for me. He paid it all for me. He is faithful. I am made holy because He is holy. He’s blotted out all of my sin. He loves me.
Like I said, I didn’t realize the full implications of not comparing my painting to others until I began writing this blog. And though Em’s is much more sophisticated than mine (her’s is the one that looks like water) and Shondra’s miles more original (her’s is the swirls (she had to make every single color that she used)), mine is just as much an expression of praise and worship as theirs. Our individual relationships with Jesus are the same way; He speaks to us all in our own language (Mark Batterson says this), we’ve all been given unique spiritual gifts and talents in order to serve Him, and we all learn and grow is such diverse fashions that we should never think of comparing ourselves!
I’m super quirky, with a quick wit and no filter (I promise I’m working on it, Mom) and most of time these traits seem to put me into some undesirable situations where end up I asking myself “why am I the way that I am?”. But I’m learning to love myself and not to compare the beginning of my walk with what is likely the middle of someone else’s.
Maci
