Trust

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight. -Proverbs 3:5-6


One word. One leap of faith.

I am pouring my heart out to God, grappling with all He is saying and attempting to assemble the mixed pieces of me that come in a tattered plastic bag called life. He gives me little frames of the big picture, and I grab them with grimy, eager fingers and arrange and rearrange to how I see they should fit. Sometimes I get frustrated and jam a job in the bottom corner where it doesn’t sit quite right. I place a relationship next to it, though it appears upside down and a tad bit crooked when I take a step back.

But to me, my picture looks good. I see some nice colors and feel the flow and think how I could shuffle a few more pieces and they’d match up pretty well. Still I stare, eyes assessing.

There is something missing, one brush stroke from keeping it a masterpiece. My pencil slips from my pocket to my hands, and I turn it over and press the eraser to the work in front of me. Line marks and pencil shavings shower the canvas as I rework my life portrait, only when I step back again and take notice of this abstract art, it is out of order worse than before. This is definitely NOT a piece I’d be proud to hang in my hallway.

In the middle of my musing, underneath my workbench I hear a scrape along the wooden floorboards. Dipping towards the sound, I crouch and scan the dark crevice underneath me. There, huddling in the back, resting between clouds of dust and dirty rags stained with paint, the one word I had lost months ago stares me straight in the face. I level myself and sit, staring back, until I tentatively reach out my hand in invitation. I am unsure how it will react- I had never bothered to look for it once it was gone and pushed any thought of it out of my mind. I was doing just fine on my own. My puzzle was coming together nicely; it was aesthetically pleasing from the outside. Others loved how it looked. Only I remembered the thin foundation it tottered precariously on. Only I knew the void beneath the layers.

Still, it’s been so long since I welcomed this word into my world, since I let it transform me. Could I be allowed another chance? After it was right beneath my feet all along, and I brushed it back when I became too busy creating my own tapestry of tales?

My hand reaches farther into the darkness, bold now. I need this, I realize, I cannot continue crashing layer upon layer of life onto one another, tangling my direction in yards of knotted yarn.

“Please,” I beg the object in the shadows, “You are what I must hold onto.”

Delicately, it slinks closer, faster, picking up power until I am knocked on my back with the weight now wriggling in my arms. A warm realization washes over me, and I wonder how I ever thought I could do this alone. I hold such a comfort, nestling it close to my chest. The missing piece to my puzzle, found at last.

Trust.

One tiny word. Big implications.

I've been coming up with all these brilliant ideas. Good stuff, too. All involving my life and where I'm thinking God is taking it.
I look back at my journal entries. When I wrote the things I did, I'm sure God thought it was utterly laughable. Me, trying to take the great matters of the universe in my small, clumsy hands.

Hasn't He shown me over and over how capable and reliable He is?

Our own life’s paintings have smudges, tears at the edges, wrinkles and mixed colors from broken crayons haphazardly tossed on the paper. When we layer that first line, charcoal seeping into the fibers of the print, we see it straight. It appears to be as it should, so we add Crayola, coloring the roses in our garden yellow and painting green into the sky. We’re on to something beautiful, and we continue forward, building bridges with pictures, creating a collage of culture.

We step back to admire our artwork, pastels in our hair and paintbrush in hand. But instead of that wonderful image we were certain was made, the painting before us is swirled in squiggles and blurred with blots. Where did we go wrong? How can our life, our creation, look like this? We are alone in our workroom, but hear a soft rustle close by. Too close to imagine, too close to ignore.

Check under the table. The Great Painter who sits at your easel just might show you the right tool to take your image from a clutter of confusion to something breathtaking.



Prayer:
Gracious God, how many times do I try and take my life into my own hands? How often do I forge ahead making plans from the ideas You give me, only to run in place? Father, You hold my paintbrush in Your hands, and You draw with sure, solid strokes. I turn my life over to You, to take control of my canvas. Make me beautiful. Amen.