I should have FELT honored. One of my pieces of art had been accepted for an art show in the nearby trendy community of Niagara-on-the-Lake. College art students from our area had been vying for a place in the prized showing. I should have felt honored, but I didn’t.
The painting that had been chosen from my portfolio to be submitted to the selection committee was, in my mind, underwhelming. It was not great art; it was not even good art. It was, in my humble opinion, almost-good-enough art. Almost-good-enough art is not good enough and should have been discarded. They say the difference between a good artist and a bad artist is simply that a good artist has the courage to throw his bad art away. Why hadn’t I done it?
Something you have created is a little like your own child. It may be ugly, but it’s my baby, and you better be very careful what you say about it. And the more time you have invested in making it what it is, the more reluctant you are to destroy it. It’s like a piece of congealed time and it seems such a waste to put your time in the garbage can. Now I was committed. The teacher had turned a deaf ear to my pleas. The art show was set to open that Friday evening at 7:00. My art was going to be on display and that was that.
In times of crisis, when the pressure is on, ordinary, honest folk are sometimes driven to desperation. And I was desperate. At 6:45 p.m., I stood in the lengthening shadows outside the town hall where the show was to be held. I should have been wearing a trench coat.
At 7:02, someone turned the lights on inside, and in short order a security guard unlocked the front door. I was the first one in. Grateful that the conveyors were busy with last-minute preparations, I made my way along the corridors, scanning the displays. I slunk (or is it slinked? Not usually being in the slinking mode, I am unfamiliar with the appropriate form) past some very nice pieces before I saw mine hanging there.
I had been disappointed with it before, but now seeing it in this exalted company, it looked even more sorry than I had thought. It had to go.
It isn’t possible to steal something that is already yours, I told myself as I removed the piece and slid it into a nearby receptacle. But it didn’t seem to calm the butterflies in my stomach. I didn’t begin to breathe naturally until I was back in my car and heading for home.
The teacher may have suspected foul play, but she never said a thing about it. I returned to art class determined not to let that happen again. If I wasn’t prepared to let a piece come under the scrutiny of the public, my signature didn’t go on it. That was the time to deal with it. Which reminds me of a little poetry fragment from the pen of John Oxenham:
Every day is Judgment Day,
Count on no tomorrow.
He who will not, when he may,
Act today, today, today,
Doth but borrow sorrow.
When I was younger, we used to hear a great deal about Coming Events. I don’t remember much about the signs, but the reality of heaven and hell were so impressed upon our young minds that I thought of them in the same terms as Hamilton, where we had loved ones living. Heaven and hell and Hamilton were real places with real people–and not very far away either.
Since those days, much of the preaching on the Lord’s return seems to be tinged with guilt or fear. It must be thought that these emotions are appropriate stimulants to arouse God’s people to action. I have not found it to work. Only the constraining love of Christ (2 Cor. 5:14) will carry us through the hard times and discouragements, the personal criticism and opposition.
There will be a fire at the Judgment Seat, and loss will be suffered, it is true. But isn’t this done in grace too? From my meeting the Saviour at the cross until He seats me on His throne (can it be!), my story is all grace from start to finish. Anything that I have done in time for my own glory will look so tawdry there in the glorious splendor of the Servant of all, I will be glad to see it burn! Of course, I will wish I had done it for Him. But how good to have my life edited by the Master Himself, to have it just the way He planned it.
So the question is this: Is what I’m living for worth Christ dying for? When He puts His signature upon me, will those things be in or out?