God Doesn’t Need a Clean Canvas

I recently pulled out a painting I had done about seven years ago, when I had only been painting for a few years.

It was called In the Midst.

There were things I liked about it, but I was never really satisfied with it. Eventually, it ended up in the pile with some of my other old paintings. Not necessarily something I was going to throw away, but certainly not something I expected to do much with.

Something prompted me to pull it out again.

Many of my painting choices were simply those of an inexperienced painter. The colors weren't quite right. Some areas were too heavy. Others were flat. There were places where I had been sloppy or just didn't yet know how to do what I was trying to do.

And then there was the texture.

Back then I was experimenting with all kinds of things. I added different materials and textures, trying this and that without really knowing where any of it would lead. It was pretty haphazard.

Seven years later, all of that was still there.

I could have looked at those old experiments as something I had to cover up. Instead, as I began working on the painting again, something interesting happened.

They gave me something to work with.

The uneven surfaces caught the paint differently. Old marks showed through new layers. What had once seemed random began creating depth and interest in places I couldn't have planned.

In fact, I don't think I could reproduce some of it now if I tried.

The inexperienced painter had unknowingly left something behind for the more experienced painter to work with.

And I began thinking about the way God works with us.

We love Romans 8:28:

"And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him..."

All things.

That's a pretty enormous promise.

I've lived long enough now to have some things I wish had gone differently. I've made mistakes and choices I wouldn't make today. There are things that happened to me that I certainly didn't choose.

And I've experienced loss I would never call good.

I don't believe Romans 8:28 asks us to call those things good. It tells us that God can work in all things for our good.

There is a difference.

God doesn't need a clean canvas.

He can work with the decisions we wish we'd made differently, the things we tried that didn't work, the years when we didn't know what we know now, and even the things that happened to us that we would never have chosen.

Some of it may look pretty haphazard from where we're standing.

But none of it is beyond His creative hands.

As I worked on the painting, a dark area could become depth. A shape that hadn't quite worked could disappear into something else. A new color layered over an old one created a richness I wouldn't have had if that first color hadn't been there.

Even the roughness became part of the beauty.

I find myself wondering if God does something like that with us.

Not erasing our stories. Not pretending the painful parts weren't painful. And not somehow making evil good.

Redeeming.

Taking what is actually there and creating with it.

Maybe that's one of the reasons this old painting has affected me so much.

I didn't remove every evidence of the inexperienced painter who first created it. She's still there. Her experiments are there. Her brushstrokes are underneath mine.

And now I can see what became possible because I didn't have to erase them.

The painting has a new name.

Glory Falls.

And there is one final detail that doesn't really show in a photograph. I added just a little real gold metallic paint to the falling glory—lightly and gently, just enough to catch the changing light throughout the day. Sometimes you see it. Sometimes you don't. Then the light shifts and there it is.

I think that's rather fitting.

Because perhaps glory doesn't only fall on the parts of our lives we think turned out well.

It falls into the rough places too—the mistakes, the experiments, the losses, the things we wish had been different.

And somehow, in the creative hands of God, nothing is wasted.