God Leaves the Color Up To Us

“The tapestry of life”.  “God writes straight with crooked lines”.  “God draws us to salvation”.  These are a few of the phrases that have helped me in my search to understand who I am, why I am here, and where am I destined to be. 

I formed an image of God and His guidance in my life when I was about 8 years old that I find myself going back to more and more in these days as I fret over the future of our children, our country, and our world.  It is an image I shared only once with my Mom when I was going through a particularly tough decision in my life.  I’m not sure she understood my description because she laughed.  

I think she may have thought I saw God as an eternal Bob Ross.  But as we “fleshed out” my image a bit more, she helped me understand what I was really seeing.  In hindsight, my mom was a great catechist and spiritual director for me.  Here is the image I see, and the interpretation Mom and I came up with:

I see God standing in front of His already finished painting of His creation (each and EVERY person) from the beginning of time until the end.  Although the painting is finished (since God is outside of time and space) it is also ever-changing because of Man’s free will.  God already knows what choices we’ll make in life, but He refuses, out of love for us, to interfere with those choices.  Instead, He “edits” the painting each time we make a wrong decision, a wrong decision by another affects us, or a natural disaster hits us, to provide us another chance to be where He wants us to be; with Him forever in Paradise.

These “edits” are the Grace of the Sacraments He gives to us through Jesus Christ and the Gifts of Holy Spirit.  We only need to recognize, accept, and use these graces and gifts to allow the tapestry of God’s creation to include us in the end.

As I said, the image is much easier to see in my mind than it is to describe it in words.  The bottom line is that we are all drawn into temptation, doubt, and despair many times in our lives.  It is up to us to recognize that God’s hand is still in control of the paintbrush that colors our future.  He leaves the color of the paint up to us.