Messing Up God's Plan

(*Note* I will be posting a blog soon with pictures of the progress from yesterday. I just really wanted to blog on this. God layed it on my heart. I hope you guys think about it for the next few days and it speaks to you in some way. Love you all!)


As most of you know from my previous post, I was out of town the second Sunday of Canvas. As I also posted earlier, the decision was made to leave the artwork freestanding, untouched for all three services. I finally was able to grab the message on CD that I missed that Sunday as well as see the canvas again. I was in for quiet a shock. As I turned the corner into Epic, I immediately noticed something horrible was wrong with the canvas. To my disbelief there had been red paint slung all in the middle of our beautiful art. The art was finally taking a direction and it was so exciting to see where it was going!! Yet there stood this giant piece of canvas I had been pouring my heart and soul into for the past two weeks, praying over, dreaming about, ruined. I was stunned, speechless. There were no words to express my emotions. I had a lump in my throat that felt the size of Texas. Someone in passing must have noticed me standing motionless in a gaze of fear and came to my side. They told me what had happened. They said I needed to listen to the message. The message. Hmmm....I had not heard it yet. I was suddenly so eager to hear what excitement I had missed. So I grabbed up one of the recordings and quickly ran to my jeep and played it in my CD player. It sounded so usual at first, IV coming on, welcoming everyone to Epic. Then he started speaking about God's masterpiece. The masterpiece He paints daily in our every day lives when we are so busy and unaware. I could hear him picking up the paint brush and then it happened. I heard the red paint slide onto the painting Melody and I had worked on. He told of how our sin and our plans for our lives ruins God's masterpiece. My heart was breaking. No longer was it because our artwork had a runny red glob in the middle, instead because I understood exactly what he was saying. Our artwork is no where near comparable to the masterpieces God paints every single day, however I knew just a teeny weensy bit, on a very smaller scale how God must feel everytime I say no to Him. The times He has already painted it in my life. It is already there, and I am busy trying to paint it in myself. What a mess I must look standing with all of that runny red paint on me in the middle of his beautiful artwork. I was touched. Something deep in my soul was awakened with this new understanding. I have always been one who loves everything life has to offer. The beauty and the chaos. I never take simple things for granted. Like the color of green the grass is after a hot summer Alabama rain. Or the way my daughter stares out the window while we are driving like she knows some big dark unkown secret. Or the way the sun shines on just the right spot of my yard at just the right time of day. Yet I now realize even though I take in every second of every moment that I am blessed with, how often do I find myself "telling" God how I think things should be. The perfect example.....Cystic Fibrosis. How many times a day do I say, you know, God I need you to do this, this is what needs to happen, I need to be well. Instead of trusting that God is the artist, and is painting something so unimaginable, so breathtaking that not I, nor you could ever even begin to wrap our minds around it. He knows the next brush stroke. He knows what I need and what I do not need. I think I need to be well, however He thinks I need to be sick. So this leads me to another idea, maybe the red paint, maybe it isn't always things that we do in our lives. Maybe sometimes it is misfortune, or illness that we stumble into with no fault of our own. But I ask you this....without the red paint, how beautiful would the world be?? If I was well, I cannot tell you where I would be today. I cannot tell you that I would notice the shades of the sky on a late afternoon, or the way the gravel crunches under my feet as I walk the trail between my dad's house and mine. I may not ever notice how beautiful it is to pull into Epic every Sunday morning, and see the most incredible people that I have ever met in my life. And to know they are all on my side, praying for me, and hoping and watching for my health to get better right along side of me. I may never notice the kindness of a smile. If I were well, things may swim past me so fast in a sudden blur. I would be left with the rest of society waiting to realize how beautiful and sudden this life is at an old age when I was wrinkled and tired. If that is how I see the red paint in my life, then I welcome it. Because even when there is red paint, there is also new beginnings. New beginnings for our lives. God can step in and paint over every last single stroke until all the red is gone. He can make it a masterpiece, His masterpiece. So I say to you today, no one is perfect. We as a human race will constantly struggle with messing up God's plan. We will always be red paint. Thank GOD we have a Savior who died for us, to make it right. Because I would HATE to know that I was actually in charge of what is going on around me. The one thing I have learned in my 26 years, sick or not, when I do things without God, all I end up with is a big red mess.