Mirror, Mirror...

A strange form of artwork, I know, but when God put it in my heart to reach middle and high school girls I knew I needed to reach them where they're at, so I took my art to their restroom. The words on the mirror are from Proverbs 31:25, "She is clothed with strength and dignity, she can laugh at the days to come." The vanity says,"Let your beauty shine from within." In an age when we focus so much on external appearances, we need so desperately to remind one another that beauty is so much deeper. It is sacred and eternal. The desire to feel beautiful was created in us for a reason. God's grace and love are revealed uniquely in a woman at rest with who God created her to be...redeemed in Christ to reflect a powerful beauty that never fades!

face it!

The girl in this painting does not have a face. Her face is your face and my face, too. It is the face of every woman who has ever given her life to the Lord.
It breaks my heart, my messy heart,when we as women are intimidated by "the Proverbs 31 woman" as if she were some unattainable perfection created merely for us to compare ourselves and fall short every time. I don't think that is what God had in mind when he included her description in His Word.
You see, God has given us enough grace in Christ to actually BE the "Proverbs 31 woman." We may not feel like her all the time, or even act like her all the time, but in Christ, we ARE her. The sooner we believe this truth, the sooner we will begin to live it! Rather than try to act like her, we must be willing to repent and surrender daily to the grace of God in us that is made perfect in our weakness.
One of the Scriptures where Paul describes God's grace in his weakness is 2Cor. 12.

Seeing God

I used to think that"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God" meant there would be some sort of miraculous sighting, something supernatural and otherworldly. Now I know that it means exactly that, but not in the way I had expected. To see God is not always to see a bright light at the end of a dark tunnel but rather to see the tiniest bright spots within the tunnel along the way. When God gives us the grace to see His hand at work even in the smallest things, we experience the blessing of seeing God and it is certainly a miraculous and otherworldly joy!

Rest for Your Heart

Saint Augustine once said, "We were made for you, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you."

This quote has served as a theme for the artwork of Messy Heart Studio, which is the name I gave to my style of art, not really an actual studio, unless you consider a paint table in the corner of my husband's downstairs office a "studio."

I chose the name Messy Heart because although we tend to want a neat and tidy life, with everything in its place and a place for everything, that is not reality. The truth is that even though God created humanity to beautifully reflect his image, man and woman chose to rebel against him. In so doing they brought brokenness, pain, and restlessness into God's perfect creation. Since then we have all been born with an unsatisfied hunger for something more. The good news is that God chose to graciously restore his relationship with us by sending his own son to suffer the penalty of that rebellion. Jesus Christ bore the sins of the world so that we, you and I, along with all those who choose to trust in him above all else could live forever as children of God. When we believe in him, he sets us free from the bondage of sin. And yet our brokenness continues to plague us and to fight against our desire to live for his glory, so yes, our hearts remain messy as we learn to trust in him more and more each day. The good news is that he is coming back and when he does he promises to complete the restoration, that we might live forever with him, gloriously renewed once and for all!