Out of the Blue

It sorta happened out of the blue. And sorta not.

I'd tried before...and failed, in my estimation. It just didn't work. Wouldn't work. And that was that.

What am I talking about?

....Art.

Ever since I was a little girl, I've scribbled on paper. Pencil, markers, colored pencils, crayons, coloring books...Ah, someone say bliss. I loved art--loved drawing. And I always dreamed of being able to draw really big things. Things that would "wow" those who saw it. I wanted to be an artist.

My scribbles grew more recognizable as the years passed. I was happy with some, and not happy with others. People started noticing, but I shrugged it off. I wasn't as good as I wanted to be.

The time came when I went to draw a person and cringed at the end result. Think maybe I'll stay with stick people... But that wasn't satisfying. I tried again and again over the years to draw a really good person, but even by the time I was 19, the best I could do with a person was drawing them from the back and not doing a face. But I wanted to draw faces. I wanted to draw people.

Some time ago, I started trying to draw people--faces. And the first try wasn't the best. But I was surprised at how much like a person it looked. I tried again and again (this was while I was working as an intern at Young Disciple Ministries this last year), but never was satisfied. I finally got a face that looked semi-good, but I couldn't do it a second time. I gave up. Drawing people just wasn't my talent.

I came to Thailand expecting to have little time for artistic pursuits. But since getting sick, and the long recovery period following it, I've found that to be untrue. I decided to draw myself one day, for some strange reason, and found a very, very rough-looking version of myself staring back at me. True, it didn't much look like me. I wasn't in the picture. But it was a person--a better one than I'd ever come up with. I decided to try again.

Perhaps you've seen what's come of my attempts, on Google + and on Facebook. Perhaps not. In any case, I'm going to share some with you. Really, I didn't imagine for the world that recovering from dengue would take so long: but I heard someone say the other day that after they had it the first time, they couldn't walk for a month. At least I didn't get it that bad. At any rate, my time stuck in my room, too exhausted to do much else, has shown me something pretty important. Something I don't think I'd realized or really thought about before.

Talents. God's given them to each of us. Why does He give us talents?

To glorify Him.

Not ourselves, in the possessing and expressing of the talent, but Him in the giving and shaping of that talent.

True, we need to develop it; we need to cultivate it and better it, or it will go away. But God ultimately blesses as we try.

My question has been: what on earth am I going to do for God with this talent?

The answer isn't obvious to me. But God knows.

And I doubt if I would've discovered that without being sick. Or taking so long to recover. Or trying.

The Lord works in strange ways, is all I can say.

How about you?

What talents has He blessed you with? What are you doing with them? Are you using them for the Lord? When the end comes, and all of our work is tried, will He say, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant"? Will you be found to possess more and greater capacity with the talents given you than when they were first bestowed?

I can only hope and pray that those blessed words will ring in my ears someday....soon, at that.

Talents. They show up in interesting places.

Sometimes, out of the blue.

 What you see here is the progression... The earliest try is at the top and the rest are in order to the most recent at the bottom.