God the Artist

Have you ever seen "The Joy of Painting" with Bob Ross? If you haven't, it's a show where an amazing nature painter, Bob Ross, starts with a blank canvas and begins to apply paint. As the show progresses, his plans for the canvas will begin to take shape. He will cover the top of the canvas with blue, and a sky appears. He will add little dabs of white paint, and all of the sudden, it's a cloud, becoming more and more realistic with every new thing he does. He will make a line of black across the canvas, and before your eyes, a mountain will be formed.

For me, watching that show causes me to wonder what it would have been like to watch God as He created the world. Unlike Bob Ross, however, God started with nothing. He didn't have paints, or even colors. He didn't have a clean, white canvas, he had a vacuum (not the kind you use to clean). And finally, He didn't have a paintbrush or any tools, He created us with His spoken words. Isn't that amazing? We are God's words! We, and everything else, exists because of them and we consist of them. He said "Let there be light" and there was light. I can't walk into my room, lay some fabric on my sewing machine, and say "Let there be a new dress". It would never work. Besides, I would already have the materials. God created light out of nothing! There have been dresses before, and fabric, and sewing machines, and thread, but before God spoke the phrase, even the word "light" did not exist. But once God spoke it, not only was there light, but it was exactly what God planned and wanted. Have you ever thought about that? God not only created light, but also the idea of light. No one else in the history of the world has done or could ever do this. Talk about starting from scratch!

Today I saw a butterfly. I didn't just see it though, this time I really observed it. It landed on my hand, and I looked at its wings first. At first glance, they seemed to be a rather uninteresting shade of brown, but, looking closer, they had small circles bordered in orange, with pink and blue in the very center. The tips of its antennae were little ovals with a stripe through them. It was licking (or smelling?) me with its tongue, and I thought about the exquisite array of muscles that were working in such a small space. Its back was covered in fine brown soft hairs. This creature was so tiny, yet God cared enough about it to paint it with beautiful colors. He cared enough about it to give it a complicated system of muscles and senses for it to function. He not only knows when it loses a hair, He cares. I realized this butterfly and I are in the same boat, uncertain of our futures but in the hands of a loving God who knows and cares and directs our futures.

God is the ultimate artist. He not only paints our world, He paints our lives. Much like a Bob Ross show, we are watching God stand before a blank canvas. He puts a bit of paint here and there, uses this brush and that color. We wonder what He is working on right now. We wonder why he is using that color. We wonder what His plan is for the canvas and what it will look like when finished. But we just have to wait and see. He knows what He is doing. When we see a black smudge across an otherwise perfect canvas, He sees a mountain taking shape. We just have to trust His plan and follow His will, for only then will we finally see that finished product of a life well lived for God's glory and purposes.