Blog # 61 A WORK OF ART - by God's design

Blog # 61 A WORK OF ART, by God's design. Think for a moment of a great artist in a paint store. Moving among the colors spread out on the shelves, the artist selects several of them and brings them into his studio. The artist has a commission to paint a picture of a beautiful sunset. The colors chosen at the store are to be used in the painting. In order to play their part in the creation of the painting the various colors must give themselves, some of them spread on the canvas just as they are, others to be blended with darker shades of the same color or lightened with white. Each of the colors is poured out and recreated in the skill of the artist to share with the other colors in the final masterpiece. We have a parallel with the artist his colors and his masterpiece in God's dealings with us who believe in God. As there were other colors on the shelf in the store not chosen for this particular picture, so it would seem there are some persons in the world who have not yet come to know the Lord personally, perhaps through no fault of their own. But we who do believe in God and love God know we have been chosen by God to share in a very definite way in creating with God a certain reality which can very well be called a masterpiece, a vine, a body, a church. We know God wants all men and women throughout the world to share in the destiny of Jesus, but for the time being many do not know it, many do not believe. We who do believe are like the colors selected by the artist. But in order to share actually in the plan of God for us we must believe, be born from above, change, be holy, become like little children, forgive our brothers and sisters from our hearts, reform our lives. As Jesus put it on another occasion, unless we take up our cross daily and come after Him we cannot be His disciples, we cannot share His destiny, we cannot die, rise, and be glorified through, with, and in Him. We remain merely colors rather than an integral part of a beautiful masterpiece.