Café Terrace at Night was painted by Vincent van Gogh in Arles, France during September 1888. It can be viewed at the Kroller-Muller museum in the Veluwe (well worth a visit if you like paintings and sculptures).
Any form of art – be it a painting, sculpture, installation or other, takes patience, care, attention to detail and time. Well skill is also needed of course! I could never paint anything like the above. If I painted, it would be stick shaped people and splodges for everything else!!
The art of trust.
Like a painting, trust does not just happen. This is particularly true since there can be all kinds of things around us that cause us to perhaps doubt rather than trust! These can include things we see in the news – various events in the past months have disturbed many people. Yet also there are circumstances that we personally face or misconceptions that we have about God, life and how things are or simply what we feed our minds on most of the time.
In the book of Proverbs, we can read these words,
Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight. Proverbs 3:5-6.
God can be trusted – do you agree or not? Why do you respond the way you do?
Trusting in the Lord is not just about reciting verses from the Bible but living it out. It takes walking out, there is an art to it! With God’s help it is possible.
Terry Hoggard (who presently serves with Convoy of Hope Europe) wrote in a recent blog about some of the challenges that come in our lives,
…these things come to shape us! These challenges are not taskmasters … they are teachers!
How do we respond to such a thought?
The art of trust…
One last thought here on trust is from Brennan Manning’s book, “Ruthless Trust”:
“The foremost quality of a trusting disciple is gratefulness. Gratitude arises from the lived perception, evaluation, and acceptance of all of life as grace – as an undeserved and unearned gift from the Father’s hand”
What do you think of those words?
Gratitude… it is part of the art of trust.
We all put our trust in something – be it what we see in the news, our bank account balance, our relationships, our career, what others tell us or other things.
Where is our ultimate trust? Is it in the One, the greatest Artist ever; who created the masterpiece of the entire universe? The One who has shared the human experience himself in Jesus Christ?
He gets it. He understands the art of trust since he has walked it himself in the stuff of life!
Andy