I don’t paint, draw, or do anything very artistic for that matter. I love to write but I’m not much of an artistic, creative writer type of person. I’m not very good with long flowery descriptions, and I’m horrible with dialogue. In other words, I’m not actually that good of a writer 🙂 … but I just love to write. So I stick with what I can do and that is this. I love to tell stories with lessons.
I love stories. Life is story. God’s Word is a tremendous adventure, the story of stories, the most majestic tale of love, loss, tragedy and victory that ever was told. And in God’s Word, He pulls no punches. He tells it like it is. And I love that. I love truth, love to see God’s super natural power intersecting our daily lives. And, well, I just love to tell stories.
I am aware that this probably annoys some people. Because I tend to think that everything is a fun story. So, I will tell about an odd encounter at the grocery store as if it were headline news. My dad is the same way. He can turn the stupidest event into a story and somehow make people listen. And, interestingly enough, I can already see this in my son. Everything is a larger-than-life adventure to him.
So while there’s nothing wrong with telling stories, I’ve been thinking lately about the weighty significance of how we tell them. For example, a few things recently have made me realize, Wow–there are definitely two sides to every story! So let’s say we have an event. There are two people involved, person A and person B. Person A sees it from her perspective, person B sees it from his perspective. They disagree. Then, here’s the scary part. Person A tells the story to another person, person C–and she emphasizes that part that she wants to emphasize. It’s still the truth, but it’s dramatized from her perspective. So now it’s interpreted by person C as a major mistreatment of person A. Now person B tells the story to another person, person D from his perspective, but heightened emphasizing the part that he wants to emphasize. Now person D interprets based on this heightened story, and it seems a major mistreatment of person B.
What’s scary is that this happens all the time. Every single time we say something, we paint a picture. We paint pictures of each other, of circumstances, of events, of stories. We go around, all day long, every day, painting pictures. We use our words to paint: We paint those we don’t care for as villains, we paint ourselves as saints, we paint our spouses as one or the other based on what day it is :).
And what this all boils down to is humility. We paint the way we do because of either pride or humility. Humility chooses to paint others with strokes of grace, highlighting beauty and diminishing blemishes.
For example, Our Creative Director recently took a picture of Joy and me for our church website. I kind of joked when he was taking our photos that I wanted him to use whatever lens he had that would erase my big surgery incision scar on my cheek :). I was half-joking, but when he posted the picture, somehow you couldn’t even see my scar! Let me tell you how thankful I am that he is a gracious photographer and chose the picture that had the lighting just right (or maybe he used photoshop!). It’s not that I wanted him to create a false picture, but I sure appreciated that he chose to “paint” our picture in a way that was gracious, a way that showed us in a positive light. That’s why good photographers don’t take pictures in direct, blinding sunlight. They take photos in “gracious light” so to speak.
We reveal our pride or our humility by the way we describe those who believe differently than we do. “They have whacked-out views” reveals pride. “They believe a little differently than we do in this area” reveals humility.
So all this to say that where God convicted me in this area was in regards to my story about our adventure in San Jose. I told the story from my perspective. And it was true–all of it was absolutely true, right, accurate to the best of my knowledge. But it would also be true, right, accurate of our Creative Director to post a picture of me squinting miserably in the bright sunlight, with this lens focused tightly in on the bright red incision on my cheek. He could have really been cruel and had me sit and then taken the picture from a perspective that made my thighs look as big as tractor trailers (don’t you hate those pictures?). That would still have been true, right, accurate … but not exactly gracious.
The pastor that made some decisions that caused us pain is human. Just like me. I’m pretty sure I’ve made more stupid decisions that he has. I’m pretty sure I don’t want other people to write about my stupid decisions, immortalizing them for all time. God’s Word says that “Love covers over a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8). When we paint with love, we paint in a way that is true, right, accurate, but tinted by the beautiful color of love. We dip our brush into the dye of grace and choose to add an extra hue of forbearance, of humility, of charity. Whether we’re painting our spouse, our best friend, the church across town, or the person who wronged us, we choose to paint with love. We choose to immortalize a picture of them that they would thank us for.
So I’m editing my story. I think it still has value, and I think God still wants to use our adventure. But by His grace I’m a different girl than I was two years ago when I wrote it. And certainly different than I was five years ago when I lived it. I pray, I plead that God would make me a woman who paints with love, who paints with grace, who chooses to always describe people and situations with words that the other person would thank me for. It sounds funny but when I was praying to God about how this works, about how to describe things and situations fairly, it was impressed on my heart, “Paint them the way their mother would.” Wow. That settles it. No one has eyes of love for my kids more than me.
Do you know that this is what Christ has done for us? He has painted us for the Father. His sacrifice has once and for all painted us with the gracious strokes of forgiveness. His blood painted our picture–creating a masterpiece as perfect as Christ Himself. He chose to die that we might be painted in a perfect way. This is love.
Lord increase our love. Teach us by your spirit. Lead us in humility. Help us in the way we paint.