If how I spend my time in Moldova was pie-charted, more than
half of it would be belong to one partition: school. Each weekday I spend time
with the Raatz daughters, three wells of endless creativity, as they pummel
through elementary, middle-, and high school.
Now if only that pie-chart were real pie.
With the girls, I am challenged and stretched. I go from evaluating
the geographical features of South America to considering the repercussions of
Old Testament battles to chugging formulas for the nth term in mathematical sequences.
Because I spend so much time in the classroom, much of my
growing comes from my experiences there. And while I’m quantitatively giving, I
am qualitatively receiving.
Let me share with you the most painful lesson I have learned
yet: an art lesson.
It is also the most beautiful lesson I have learned in the
classroom.
Lauren, the youngest, is currently in an art class, and
earlier this month, she was watercolor painting. On the first day of school of
this semester, she pulled out two fresh boxes of watercolor paints. We humoredly
marveled at all the synonyms paint companies can come up with for primary
colors. As we looked at names, I
turned one of the boxes over to read about two watercolor techniques:
wet-on-dry and wet-on-wet.
For the wet-on-dry, I read that people “use this style of
painting when sharp edges are desired.” I thought back to all my past art
classes, recalling that I chose to do most if not all my watercolor paintings
in the wet-on-dry method. I like it best that way. Growing up, I always wanted
my art to look as close as possible to reality. With wet-on-dry, the shapes
appear clearer, and the product looks less like Impressionistic art. The colors
don’t bleed or run farther along the page than I intend. Well, except when I
use too much water. And then I unintentionally turn my sharp-edged masterpiece
into a wet-on-wet.
And a wet-on-wet, I read, is when “colors will spread easily
and will appear fuzzy.”As soon as I read that description, I recalled my “failed”
paintings, the ones that were too wet for my taste, the ones that did not look
as lifelike as my mind’s eye imagined, the ones in which the paper was rippled
and almost torn through because of the weight of the water and the thinning of
the paper due to my relentless brushing, my attempts to darken the color in places
where the paper was too wet to retain the shapes I painted.
Watercolor paints run on wet paper, but when the paper
dries, the color remains. The bright veins and splotches that have spread all
over the page don’t recollect; remain as dehydrated, silent testaments to what
the power of water can do. The color applied to the paper will have the widest
spread—the most influence, you could say—when the paper is wet.
And I heard God whisper, “That’s what I’m doing in you right
now. I’m painting on your life in this way.”
Because lately I’ve felt like wet paper.
To understand, journey back with me into the schoolroom so
that we can have a science lesson. About paper.
Paper is made of wood pulp. The two main compounds in the
cell walls of trees, lignin and cellulose, are separated through chemical or
mechanical processes, and the cellulose is preserved in long fibers. These
fibers are layered in thin sheets to create paper. Cellulose fibers are hygroscopic, meaning they absorb moisture.
When paper comes in contact with water, its fibers naturally absorb water and
they are plasticized, or weakened, because the bonds between fibers relax.
I feel that my fibers have been weakened recently.
I experienced a marvelous visit to the U.S. after my first
four months in Moldova. Goodbyes were hard, but the Eastern European welcomes
were sweet this month, as is the knowledge that my steps are ordered of the
Lord (Psalm 37:23). Cultivating relationships, forging new ones, and seeking
direction for both types are ever-pressing matters. Living boldly for the Lord
during my last five months in Moldova is crucial. Seeking the will of the Lord
for my short summer visit to the States and then for my year in Russia is
imperative. I feel the pain of missing, the excitement of the present, and the
anticipation of the unknown all at the same time. These factors pour over me
like water as I seek to balance these concerns in order focus fully on my
present.
And this water hasn’t trickled; it has dumped. And sometimes the weight of the water feels like it’s not
only weakening those fibers but breaking them.
Back to the science lesson: what determines the behavior and
strength of paper is how it was manufactured, not the source of the fibers.
And the same is true spiritually: ultimately, our strength is determined by our Source--our God. He did not construct us faultily. The fibers of our beings
are sourced in Him. Our Source is not weak when we are weak. The one who created our
fibers also, at one time, was composed of them.
The author of Hebrews explains that Jesus identifies with
us: “Since the children share in blood and flesh, he too shared in them, in
just the same way” (2:14)[.] New Testament scholar and theologian N.T. Wright,
in his book Hebrews for Everyone,
comments on how crucial this is for our understanding of Jesus’ identification
with us: “The point of [this] passage is that Jesus…could and did come to where
[we] were[.] He identified with [us][.] […]He is no distant older brother,
unable to cross the gulf to rescue his siblings. He shared in flesh and blood,
and even death itself (v. 14). There is nothing we face, today or tomorrow or
the next day, in which Jesus cannot sympathize, help and rescue us, and through
which he cannot forge a way to God’s new world.”1
He was once paper, too.
He wore our paper skin, held people with our paper hands.
His paper heart throbbed with excitement. It dropped with despair. He
experienced the limitations of the finite when he had one of our paper minds. He
knows how we are made.
Psalm 103:14 says that “He knows what we are made of,
remembering that we are dust.”
Dust. Fraglity. Paper. Fragility. Humanity. Fragility.
Recalling our Lord’s intimate identification with our
humanity bolsters my trust in His sovereignty. It steadies me when I realize
that He is sovereign over the water that soaks my paper. He controls its flow.
Regarding the Lord’s understanding of us, Isaiah presents a beautiful word picture of God's character shining forth through in fragility: “A bruised reed He will not break, and a dimly burning wick He
will not extinguish; He will faithfully bring forth justice” (42:3).
Exegetists Karl Keil and Franz Delitzsch, in their Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, note that the Hebrew words for bruised reed and dimly burning wick aren’t referencing Jews versus Gentiles so much as they are making a general reference to people “whose inner and outer life is only hanging by a slender thread. In the statement that in such a case as this He does not completely break or extinguish, there is more implied than is really expressed. Not only will He not destroy the life that is dying out, but He will actually save it; His course is not to destroy, but to save.”2
Our paper's not going to break through.
The Apostle Paul, after he had been given surpassingly great
revelations, was given his ever-mystifying thorn in the flesh (2 Cor. 12:7).
After pleading with the Lord to take it away, the Lord spoke to Paul in a way
that communicates a timeless truth to us.
“[The Lord] said, ‘My
grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness’” (2 Corinthians 12:9). When
Paul was weak, the power and influence of God in his life was strong. And yet
again the truths of Scripture break into the world of art: The colors have the
farthest spread when the paper is at its weakest.
In watercolor painting, the purpose of the water is to extend the influence of the
color. Sometimes we, in our pain-sensitive short-sightedness, become so
concerned with the water that we miss its point: the color. The water is a
medium for the color; it’s not an end in itself. The artist does not apply
water to paper without having a goal for the finish and a plan for the process.
Water weakens cellulose fibers, but it also makes the color
spread farthest. Our times of weakness enable the work God is doing in our
lives to have the most powerful effect and the most influence.
It’s more about Him than it is about us, anyway: we’re
just the papers. He’s the Artist.
It’s not so much about the water as it is about what the painting
looks like when it dries. And it will dry.
And the color, in a sense, leaves a fortifying layer.
Although water has been applied and threatened to break down the paper, the
substance of color remains through the drying and bonds to the paper. It serves to strengthen, to
define, and to characterize in an undeniable way.
What are the colors He is applying to your life? A broader
perspective? Freedom from fear? Deeply-rooted peace? Fresh direction?
He is not a breaker of bruised reeds. He is not an
extinguisher of fading wicks. And he is not a shredder of wet paper.
Let the Reed-Strengthener, let the Flame-Fanner, let the
Color-Maker have His way. For when you strengthen, when you burn brightly, when
you dry, you will shine His work more gloriously.
Thank You, God, for bringing me to a schoolroom in Moldova
to give me an art lesson.
Soaked and Colored,
Renée
Notes: 1 Wright, N. T. Hebrews for Everyone. Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge:
London, 2003.
2Keil, Karl and Franz Delitzsch. Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament. Hendrickson
Publishers: Peabody, 2006.
