A New Day Dawning

On Sunday I did something I never did before . I was asked to paint during the worship part of the service in church. At first I have to admit I thought "worship art" was pretty strange never having seen anything done like that in a service before, but Sunday's service changed my mind.

I thought how much good could a painting ( that takes only 45 minutes to paint) do to inspire others during the service. (I usually take hours to paint a painting). Well, after praying about it, by faith believing God would do something special, I went out and bought a large canvas (24x30" - it's a big church!),

Well, I used the largest brush I had, and painted, stopping at times to worship. I finished just as the music ended, signed my name and sat down. (I posted pics above, but you can see the flash - sorry!)

I was amazed at what I saw! The cloud formations, and even the rocks drew you into the focal point which of course is the sun . Close up it looked like a bit of a mess - like our lives may look to us - but from afar , - from God's perspective ,it's an entirely different thing. He's making something beautiful out of our lives.! All those rocks and hard places, dark clouds in our lives, make a most interesting composition and the painting would be nothing special without them. So with our lives, those who are His, He's creating a masterpiece ( or shall I say the Master's piece =), regardless of what we see. Following the Light we can maneuver past the rocks and not get "hung-up."I like what Rocky said in his new movie, Rocky Balboa. He said something like this: It's not how hard you can punch that counts, but how many punches you can take and still keep moving forward .

The other amazing thing to me was that the word or the message given to the church by the guest speaker afterwards was about "A New Day Dawning". He said the painting was about the message he had for the church and proceeded to give it in reference to the painting. "The time is right to launch - couldn't navigate before in the night because there are rocks".

They say "a picture is worth a thousand words" and that morning I felt God confirmed to me what I was to paint, as well as prepared us for the message, by "painting" the sky with the most beautiful sunrise (and waking me up to see it =)

The painting will hang in the church lobby I believe, but plans are being made to make prints available to those who want.

Hopefully from now on I won't doubt that God can and wants to use all the gifts that He's given to us to bless others and glorify Himself, even through a 45 minute painting =)