A Work Of Art

God's Painting

Luke 3:22 "And the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him, and a voice came from heaven, which said, Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased."

A Work of Art

I'm going to go out on a limb here and call myself a work of art. As a matter of fact, each and every one of us is a masterpiece in our own right. When we were created, we were not painted by the kindergarten class with our non-toxic paints and fat paintbrushes. We were crafted by a Master artist with the finest paints and brushes and we, each and every one of us, were painted by an artist better than Michelangelo!

You see, when we were forming in the womb, God had a plan for his piece of art. It took him nine months to create the perfection He saw in us. He didn't just blink us into existence like a genie, no He masterfully created each and every brushstroke of our life and when we were born, He already saw the finished fulfilled work of art in its completion to the end, hanging in the Sistine Chapel. 

He looked at us and it was good! He knew every brushstroke our life would take. He knew the perfections and imperfections because He saw us up close and personal, not from the marble floor below. No, your mother, father and everyone else saw you from below the art. They gazed at you and saw a tiny infant seemingly perfect. As you grew, people saw you and studied you as a piece of art and came to a conclusion of what they perceived. But to God, you were still a masterful work of art in progress. 

If you say that God makes no mistakes, you'd be correct in your assumption. The imperfections I referred to was our free will. You see Adam and Eve were made perfect! A completely perfect work of art finished and drying in the sun. Free will was the last brushstroke in giving us a chance to assist with the painting. The reason we're not the creating artists is that we botch the job. Our free will leads us to the imperfections of our life, all of which God saw in advance when creating you but he is not in control of our free will.

I knew as I got to this point in my life I had done a bang-up job of this masterpiece. I didn't handle the brush with the gentleness and care of the Master artist. Not that I turned Michelangelo's work into a Picasso but I think sometimes I turned it into an Andy Warhol meaningless jumble of paint. But I digress, I'm still in the planning stages so the brush hasn't been whisked out of my hand yet. God sees a Van Gogh in me; a little loose around the edges but awaiting perfection.

I now see this illness as a chance to complete what was a little messed up. My mind, my body, my soul all are taking a little tender care of the flamboyant brush strokes that I let onto the canvas; I'm no intense chapel in the making, and definitely not in Vatican City. These illnesses I'm being faced with are all a part of the whimsical flinging of the paint onto a blank canvas, I'm now in the process of making some sense out of what I want this painting to be. I want people to look at me as a work of art, not perfect but worth looking at for hours on end trying to sum up a conclusion of what they see and are going to walk away with.

Each day I wake, after thanking the Lord for another day to open my eyes and gaze at the canvas, I stare in awe of what has the potential to be a worthy piece of artwork! My writing, my healing, my poetry, my muse all are forming an exquisite piece of artwork ready to be hung in a gallery among the greatest artists who ever lived. 

I'm not standing here and proudly boasting of a swelled ego, I am an artist sharing with you my vision of just where this completed work will stand in the end. The gates of heaven have the potential to be open for me and the gallery of brilliant colors of a reflected prism are at my fingertips. I am a light-bearer, I am a shepherd, I am not here to tell you where you've gone wrong, I'm here to tell you what went right. You were born! You were created by a Masterful artist that saw all of your potentials and now it is time for you to take control of the brush and complete the painting that was begun when you were born.

We've all made mistakes! And if you're over the half-century mark, you are now in the final stages of completing your masterpiece. Are you going to finish up by botching up the canvas? Or are you going to make the necessary changes that need to take place to see you too entering the gates of heaven, or do you even care and are just happily strolling along in life not caring where this journey ends? My friends, take care of the work of art that is you. God did all the hard work and now He hands you the brush to take care of the finished product that will hang on the walls of Heavens gallery someday.

May the blessings of the Lord our God be with you today and always!

No Net

Pss. 10:9 “He lieth in wait secretly as a lion in his den: he lieth in wait to catch the poor: he doth catch the poor, when he draweth him into his net.”

Think about it. Have you ever seen a trapeze artist walk a thin line attempting to get to the other platform…with NO NET? That’s what having no internet is like, kind of.

You’ll be surfing along that fine line, focusing on your completed task, then WHAM the internet cuts out. WHOA, you try to make some sense of the lack of balance but there is none. You don’t fall to your death I assure you but you do get that feeling of isolation and being cut off from the outside world abruptly.

We live out in the middle of nowhere and we’ve had internet issues for years now. First the wind knocks the dish out of whack, then a tree limb is in the way, then we get a new dish only for it to work temporarily, then we get a new tower but again the trees are blocking the little beam from our dish that needs to connect to the tower. This has been our balancing act for years now.

Then last week with assured confidence the internet guy comes out and tells us that there is a NEW tower we can use to connect. A new dish and a new beam that supposedly cuts through the trees like a lumberjack! Yeah it worked excellently for a day or two, then WHAM, back out again; off and on. He said we were the guinea pigs on the new system so I guess we can assuredly tell HIM that the lumberjack grew tired and left the job, eh?

I’m a writer and my blog and writing is pretty important to me as much as games and YouTube is to my guys! No net, no access to any of these things, so if you see me not blogging for periods at a time, think NET or the lack thereof. 

We also have NetFlix so you can imagine the irritation when right in the middle of a movie, the internet waves bye bye! Or worse yet, when 10 minutes are remaining and the climax is unraveling then POOF…no movie!

We don’t have many luxuries like a telephone with internet, heck we don’t even have texting available on our phones! We have the internet, that is a luxury to us because we PAY for it every month! We don’t have the luxury of pilfering/stealing/borrowing our neighbor’s wifi because as you can guess, they don’t even have internet! NetfFlix was our New Years splurge and I’m wondering if and when we’ll have good enough access to actually use the luxury on a daily basis.

Assuming everyone knew of my net woes, I excitedly posted on facebook “The net guy is here!” Well, to someONE who don’t pay attention to my wall or my posts, they thought for sure the whitecoats were coming out here with a net to get me and I maniacally went running around the yard screaming as I flee from them with their net. How funny. NOT! Although I’ll probably need them if we don’t get this internet fixed soon!

Don’t get me wrong, the net does work sometimes, I should say when it is good it is really good but when it is bad, it is really really bad! And so it goes, life without a net is not a good idea, just as walking without God is not a good idea. Good thing we have unlimited access to HIM, free of charge, without interruption! Funny thing is, with no internet, the closer I feel to God… hmm, now there’s a concept for ya.

Okay, gotta run…my garden is calling me.

Pss. 25:15 “Mine eyes are ever toward the LORD; for he shall pluck my feet out of the net.”

Photoshop - Believing is Seeing

Have you ever seen a photoshop picture? They can be pretty realistic can’t they? 

I was thinking about writing and how we embellish the truth, make up stories, color it with vivid imagination and call it fiction.

How come people can take beautiful pictures and get away without telling others that the photo is photoshopped? Is photoshopped even a word?

What IS photoshop?

“Photoshop is the leading digital image editing application for the Internet, print, and other new media disciplines. It is embraced by millions of graphic artists, print designers, visual communicators, and regular people like you. It's likely that nearly every picture you've seen (such as posters, book covers, magazine pictures, and brochures) has either been created or edited by Photoshop. The powerful tools used to enhance and edit these pictures are also capable for use in the digital world including the infinite possibilities of the Internet.”

With today’s technology, there are numerous things you can do with photoshop. I’ve seen pics of elephants walking on water, I’ve seen clouds turned into a monster storm-looking thunderous cloudburst, I’ve even seen Jesus in toast, clouds, trees, you name it, all thanks to the artists who can work photoshop.

If a writer took someone’s work and twisted it, and worked it into a totally different story, I do believe a lawsuit would ensue. But with pictures, it seems the norm to take someone’s picture and embellish it to their liking, put a caption on it, and maybe the original photographer doesn’t even recognize the pic as his/her own!

Now I’m not talking about someone re-inventing the Cinderella story, I think every writer has dappled with that tale as well as Snow White and many other fairytale's passed down through time. But when I see Lord of the Rings taken and re-invented into a “similar” story, boy it grates on my nerves!

We’re writer’s and we have our very own creative genius in our brains. We can create stories that might be general matches to other stories like say vampire stories. They should and WILL all be different from what is on the shelves now.

I’m so glad that photshop hasn’t found a way to doctor MY work, although, sometimes it does look like it needs a doctor. I’m just saying, as a photographer, a person works their tail off to capture beauty, the same goes for writer’s , we work very hard at our words so that we capture the beauty to tell a riveting story. A doctored pic to me says the photographer is too lazy to capture the REAL beauty and has to embellish it to make it shine.

If you’re a writer, you will not settle for anything less! You will make your work stand out and preferably stand alone. Sure magazines abuse airbrush, novel covers need a tricky photo to grab you, but writer’s? They walk along with only the English language (or whatever you speak) to carry their words.

Don’t photoshop your writing. Remember, you’re an artist of a different caliber. No technology is going to assist you in making it better. Use your talent accompanied with your mind to airbrush and dazzle, with WORDS!