I have hurt my back and have been in, sometimes, excruciating pain and other times just bearable. This idea of C.S. Lewis, that we are a great artwork of God's, the idea that, if a canvas or a lump of potter's clay could feel, they would endure pain – this idea has comforted me in my pain. I pray that God will not have to take "endless trouble" to finish this work of art that is me. But I do desire to be a work of art, pleasing to the Creator. Therefore I pray for the grace to endure the pain from the hand of my loving Father as the canvas endures being "rubbed and scraped and re-commenced for the tenth time," or as the lump of clay is thrown back down on the wheel to remove stubborn pebbles.
We are, not metaphorically but in very truth, a Divine work of art, something that God is making, and therefore something with which He will not be satisfied until it has a certain character. Here again we come up against what I have called the "intolerable compliment." Over a sketch made idly to amuse a child, an artist may not take much trouble: he may be content to let it go even though it is not exactly as he meant it to be. But over the great picture of his life—the work which he loves, though in a different fashion, as intensely as a man loves a woman or a mother a child — he will take endless trouble — and would, doubtless, thereby, give endless trouble to the picture if it were sentient. One can imagine a sentient picture, after being rubbed and scraped and re-commenced for the tenth time, wishing that it were only a thumb-nail sketch whose making was over in a minute. In the same way, it is natural for us to wish that God had designed for us a less glorious and less arduous destiny; but then we are wishing not for more love but for less. -- C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
"What if our lives are artworks re-presented back to the Creator?" -- Makoto Fujimura, Art and Faith
I am convinced and confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will [continue to] perfect and complete it until the day of Christ Jesus [the time of His return] Philippians 1:6 (AMP)
For it is [not your strength, but it is] God who is effectively at work in you, both to will and to work [that is, strengthening, energizing, and creating in you the longing and the ability to fulfill your purpose] for His good pleasure. Philippians 2:13 (AMP)
For we are His workmanship [His own master work, a work of art], created in Christ Jesus [reborn from above—spiritually transformed, renewed, ready to be used] for good works, which God prepared [for us] beforehand [taking paths which He set], so that we would walk in them [living the good life which He prearranged and made ready for us]. Ephesians 2:10 (AMP)
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