Painting Our Lives

"All the impressions made upon your character ought to be such as will not need to be removed. Washington Allston, the great painter, had been a long time at work on a most magnificent painting. He had nearly completed it, when his keen eye discovered some defects in a portion of the piece. He hastily drew his rough brush over that portion of the picture, intending to paint it anew. But in the midst of his plans, death seized him, and his painting remains, just as he left it. No other person can carry out the conception that was in his mind. If you allow wrong impressions to be made upon your forming character, death may meet you with his stern mandate, and fix them for ever, as immovable as it left the rough print of the coarse brush upon Allston's canvass." -- Harvey Newcomb

Harvey Newcomb wrote a book on "How To Be A Lady," and one on "How To Be A Man." Newcomb shows through his writing that one is learning throughout his entire life. Whether it be sitting on a mossy bank, standing on the beach with the morning star alighting on your face, or sitting in a hot sticky schoolroom with twenty children about you and school books and papers all about you. In each of these you are learning... but there is only one type of schooling. The word "School," causes many young children (or might I say older people as well?) to cringe. But the word "Education," or "Learning," should send a thrill of excitement up one's spine. Everything we do in this short life here on earth leads up to the eternal life we shall spend in Heaven. Like this: we know that God sent His only Son to become the lowliest of creatures, man, and that while He was fully man and was still fully God, He sinned not once. And with no sin in His body He took every sin upon Him so that when we sin once we will not spend eternity in hell-fire. We are damned to hell, and there is nothing we can do about it. But God did something about it, allowing us to enter into His presence as a spotless lamb. But there is one hitch... what if we don't put our faith in Him and His saving Grace? What if we only consider this as a fairy-tale? Perhaps we think there is some other way to "reach" Heaven. If one of these is our decision, we will certainly be cast into hell after our earthly death. But if we place our faith in Christ, knowing that what He did is the only way for us to enter into eternity with Him, we know then that God has saved our souls from the lake of fire. So in reality, what we decide here leads up to our eternal state after death. What then becomes of our small decisions? If we have been justified through Christ then we are no longer living for ourselves, but living for the one who has Saved us. How can we continue in our sinful lives after Salvation? God tells us in His Word that we may know if someone is His child by watching their "fruits." It is much like a tree... we plant an apple tree and for its entire life it bears small sour tasting fruit that tastes nothing like an apple, as a matter of fact, the apples that grow are so withered and stumped that you almost wonder if you had planted an apple tree. If someone is watching our lives, knowing that we claim to be God's child, what type of fruit will they see producing from our limbs? What are we doing for Christ, and what is our goal in life? We should be producing the fruit of the spirit which is spoken of in Galatians 5:22-"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law."

Yet there is also another way to look at our lives like a tree. You plant a very small tree and begin to watch it grow. As each day passes it grows larger, but something begins to happen. The small tree will bend and grow crooked, the weather will strip it of everything, the insects will come and devour the buds and young leaves... unless we strive to keep the young sapling up. We must place stakes up around our small plant, spray the leaves and boughs with poison so as to keep the bugs away, and make sure daily that the dead leaves or withered stems are pruned or clipped. If we do not take this same advice into our own lives and daily wash our mind and soul with the Word we will soon grow into a state that may never be changed. If we allow that small tree to grow to its full height without any help, it will look gnarled, twisted, and ugly. Our lives will become the same if we do not take hold now and begin to pluck away at the sins in our life, and to restore our minds with pure thoughts and motives.