Life In Art

I've always thought that life was like a painting. Each person has their own and they are all unique. Some people's have primarily dark colors, others have mostly bright ones, but each one has a mixture of both. No one's life is either all happy or all sad. No matter what you may be feeling right now, at some point in time you experienced the full range of emotion.

Veduta Di Piazza Della Signoria by Carlo Canella

Emotions. Good and bad situations. Think of them as the colors in your painting. Each one produces a different shape, shade, or effect to bring about the beauty that is your whole life. And it is beautiful. The only problem is that we as human beings only get to see one stroke at a time. But God sees the whole picture.

Action painting by VenusVanity

Everyone seems to fall into one of two categories: A Veduta or an action painting. For those of us who are not fine art connoisseurs, a Veduta is a highly detailed painting (usually of a city scape). An action painting, also known as gestural abstraction, is one that has been created by dribbling, smearing, or splashing paint "randomly" onto a canvas. See where I'm going with this?


Some people's paintings are so detailed, the brushstrokes so fine, that we are drawn to analyse them. We step up close and pore over every little action, word, and circumstance in their lives, reveling in all the moments that combined together to form the whole. It's kind of like they have tiny masterpieces within the larger one. On the other hand, there are paintings that, when seen up close, look messy, uncoordinated, and make no sense. Their lives are just not what we would call successful. In fact, we would rather skip over those people and move onto the Vedutas like Steve Jobs or Billy Graham. It's not until we take a step back and see the painting as a whole that we realize....

It's beautiful.

It's unique.

No one will be able to reproduce it ever again in this life.

And those are the types of people who sometimes are looked down upon or are pitied. People think, "Their life is a mess! Someone should totally grab a paintbrush and fix it for them."

But you know what? Harriet Tubman's life was an action painting and she smuggled hundreds of souls to freedom. So was Gladys Alward's- she couldn't even graduate from theology school! And yet the things she did to further Christ and save a hundred orphans from the Japanese invasion? They were amazing.

So, yes, up close your life may not seem glamorous or even put together right, but from far away....

You're life is breath-taking.

Never forget:

You are a masterpiece.