This morning I painted at church during the worship service. My subject was a “sunburst”, with streams of light pouring through the clouds, and a cross down below. The Lord helped me, but up close I couldn’t tell how I was doing. Later, at my seat, I looked at the painting from a different perspective. “Ah, those look like clouds,” I observed, and was content.
After the service I saw my friend Kathi who said she saw a man’s face in the clouds, and a dove above it. Kathi added, “I thought you must be a really good artist to have planned that.” Explaining that I hadn’t planned it, Kathi had to point out the face and dove to me. My husband also told me that he also had seen these things in the painting.
At lunch the Lord used this experience to illustrate a point to me. “Sometimes you are too close to what I’m doing to see the whole picture. You are so involved in your own part that you can’t see what else I am doing.” I believe that God plans our works out for us ahead of time, and if we learn to follow Him, we will do those works and bear good fruit. Could it be that our works include plans we do not see, even though we perform them?
God needs our hands to be His hands on the earth, but His purposes are hidden in His heart, ready to be revealed at the right time. An example of this is seen in Acts 10 & 11. God has given Peter a vision of reptiles and tells him to “Kill, and eat.” To Peter’s protests the Lord answers “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.” Peter is told then to take a journey with men he doesn’t know. Peter obeyed the Lord, not knowing God’s purposes. He was taken to Cornelius’ house, where he begins to preach the gospel, and the Holy Spirit falls on the household. Peter then understands that God’s purpose was to grant them salvation. But it wasn’t until Peter returns to the brethren in Jerusalem that the fullness of God’s purpose is discovered there: God has granted all the Gentiles salvation (Acts 11:18). “The original message of “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean,” was not given just to make Peter willing to go where he had not gone before, but show that the Gentiles were included in God’s plans.
We are a body, each member working individually yet all functioning together. Though we do our parts quite well, God has designed the body to work together. I might paint a starburst well enough, but God needs to bring a few more members of the body along to find all that was contained in God’s design. Likewise, one person may prophesy, and another give a Word of Knowledge, each serving the brethren with a piece of God’s message. But the thrill is in coming together with our gifts, whereby we receive the full revelation of what God is saying. Let us seek to see through each other’s eyes this week and perhaps we will discover God’s full purposes in what we do. Amen.
