Flipping the Canvas

It is amazing what a change in perspective will do.  I can adequately paint a wall with the right equipment, but I have never learned how to paint artistically.  Artists are able to see what others cannot and have the ability to bring an empty canvas to life with colour and detail.  It impresses me how people mix oil paint and use brushes to create pictures with a photographic and textured quality.  Bob Ross on KPBS often said anyone could paint, and I suppose he is right depending on how you define "painting."  I can apply paint to a canvas like a child, but I haven't painted anything recognisable yet.  I have seen paintings done by apes and elephants far superior to my efforts.

Perhaps I am easy to impress, but I always enjoy presentations when an artist basically attacks the canvas with quick swipes, splatters, and flourishes.  After a minute, when I still have no idea what is being painted, suddenly the artist with a quick flip of the canvas brings a recognisable image into view almost like magic:  a face, a scene, something which remained completely hidden to my eyes until the painter kindly turned it right side up for all to enjoy.  The artist knew much I did not know:  he knew what he was doing when I had no idea.  It required a change of my perspective - done for me by the artist - and then I could better appreciate the end result.

During our lives there will be many times when we struggle to understand or appreciate what God is doing because we do not have the correct perspective - His perspective.  In these times we often lose sight of God entirely.  We try to make sense of something we cannot make sense of no matter how hard we try.  Now God doesn't always flip the painting over to show us what He is up to, and He is under no obligation to.  But we are called to trust Him even when we don't understand, trusting the character and promises of God in His Word.  Focusing on ourselves or problems in the world cannot bring the peace and rest available when we look to Jesus.

God is able to do what a painter cannot do with oils and brushes:  He sometimes allows painful circumstances so He might bring a bountiful blessing from them.  He can take a severe illness and make it an asset rather than a destroyer.  He can take the loss of a job or promotion and use it to strengthen our faith in Him.  The deepest pains can lead to profound purpose which remained previously hidden all our lives.  By the grace of God from death can spring life; the lost can be found, and failed dreams can transform to enduring hope.  What would crush us God uses to strengthen, and even our faults redeemed for His praise.  I do not know how God does this, and nor can I explain how a painter can paint upside down.  But I know God is able to do everything - far beyond my ability to understand.

I daresay God at times turns our lives upside down so we might re-centre our gaze on what counts and will endure.  His ways are glorious, and His works perfection.  He is able to make this blind man see and He will do the same for all who look to Him in faith.  We do not always understand, nor can we explain.  But by His grace we can seek our great God and know certainties where all else is darkness and shadow.  In God there is no variation or shadow of turning (James 1:17):  it is we who must be turned!  Rightly Asaph wrote in Psalm 80:19, "Turn us again, O LORD God of hosts, cause thy face to shine; and we shall be saved."