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Painting on an Eternal Canvas
"Vanity of vanities," says the Preacher, "Vanity of vanities! All is vanity." What advantage does man have in all his work which he does under the sun?
- Ecclesiastes 1:2,3
I enjoy looking at art. Some art. The oddest art I still manage to enjoy is that of Salvador Dalí, but some of his stuff still doesn't do it for me. Sometimes it appears as though he was painting on a shifting canvas. I think a lot of people do that with life.
We're all working on our own life masterpiece, so to speak, and each has his or her own ideas about what constitutes a masterpiece. For some it centers on fun or novel experiences. For some, feelings of exhilaration. For some, family and relationships. For some, service or 'underdog' causes.
We put these things down on our 'life canvas', and then we find the canvas shifting. The emotional fulfillment we expected wasn't quite there. The value we place on certain relationships changes with time. Or our understanding about ourselves or life in general changes. Experiences don't carry the meaning they used to. The Preacher of Ecclesiastes called it "striving after the wind."
In terms of a painting, it's like the clock we just painted begins to look like it's draped over a tree branch. Shapes get stretched and skewed. In short order our life canvas doesn't even resemble a Dalí but a mess of color, leaving us with two options: keep painting to retain some semblance of our masterpiece or give up.
There is a third option. Move to the permanent canvas.
There is a canvas upon which we can paint a life's work that isn't merely stable across time but beyond time and across the spectra of circumstance, maturity, and understanding. That canvas is found only in Jesus.
Seeking thrills merely to satisfy some emotional desire is like painting on that moving canvas, but seeking the exhilaration of seeing a dead soul given life through obedience to Jesus is painting on His canvas. The first gets smeared by time and circumstance. The second awaits its unveiling in eternity.
Serving others merely because my sense of compassion must be satisfied is temporal. Serving others because I'm patterning myself after Jesus creates master strokes on the eternal canvas with every act.
It takes faith to paint on a canvas you can't see, especially when you're surrounded by a world of people frantically scratching out ephemeral images that will never satisfy the God-given drive to create something beautiful. The truth is that the beauty of the work comes from the faith by which it's carried out. "Without faith, it's impossible to please Him." (Heb 11:6).
Leave behind the cycle of disappointment in the shifting canvas of this world and enjoy the peace that comes from knowing that Jesus has given you access to His eternal canvas. Ask these questions of the bible: "How do I invest in something that lasts?" "How do I create something beautiful?" "How do I get access to eternal things?" The answers are only there.
