Lessons From Watercolor Painting
Sunrise At Mid-Tide
“The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD; he turns it wherever he will.”
I will never forget my first watercolor class, learning and watching how the watercolor paint will stay on the wet parts of the paper. By using just water on a brush, you can paint a shape and then if you put the paint on the brush and lightly touch the section of paper that is wet, the magic happens. You can watch the water just travel where you paved the way for it to go. You can add a different color to the same wet area and watch the colors collide, swirl and fade into each other. It’s beautiful!
It is also a pretty amazing illustration of Proverbs 21:1 “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD, he turns it wherever he will”
It is shockingly easy to turn the watercolor on the page, you can control where it flows with little effort. But trying to turn the heart of a stubborn old king? Not so much. At least for me. But for God it is just that easy.
When my oldest son was 3 years old, he was going into a wonderful special purpose program for kids with autism. He needed full time preschool, but the “Powers That Be” (or the king) only allowed him to have half days.
We advocated as best we could. We had meeting after meeting. We gathered documentation and we had all the teachers in the school, and all the therapists, all in agreement that he needed full time school.
But the director-king of Child Development Services said he can’t have full time school because the preschool he was in did not offer the preferred style of teaching kids with autism—which was exactly why we wanted that school! He needed to learn by playing and having fun. By having the teachers enter into his world so that they could earn his interest and trust, and bring him into our world. He didn’t learn by sitting at a desk doing drills and rote memorizations. He hated that, cried at that and did not learn anything from that style of teaching. He was thriving in this school and we didn’t want him to go to a different one.
For months we tried, and prayed, and nearly gave up the thought that he’d be able to attend full time.
But then out of the blue, the director-king called and said after break (it was Christmas) he could go full time. We were absolutely stunned! This person who didn’t approve of the school we all loved, changed her mind. Just like that! She said saw all the progress he has made there and agrees with us and was excited to tell us that he has been approved for full time preschool!
That was the hand of the LORD, holding his paintbrush and dabbing the paint onto the wet section of the kings heart, channeling it in the direction that He desired it to turn.
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