Somehow, the art gene skipped me. My family must have seen this early on but they neglected to tell me. When my brother painted oil paintings of mountains and sunsets over the water as a ten-year-old, my parents called it marvelous. Then when I brought a stick figure drawing, they called it marvelous. This made me wonder if they knew what marvelous means. The only C I ever received was in art. My art teacher called it a high C+ when I pleaded for help in explaining to my parents.
I had a fair genetic chance at being an artist. Mom was an artist with quilts and cakes. Her penmanship looked like art. My mom’s brothers made beautiful pottery bears and worked with wood. When I was called upon to make something out of clay, I made a bear like my uncles. I put polka dots on it. It looked like something Picasso might have done. Then we put it in the kiln, and it became permanent art. An observer later asked, as the Israelites asked about the manna, “What is it?”
Jeremiah went to a potter’s house. The artist’s first attempt at a pot went wrong. So he smashed the clay and started over. God is sovereign over us as a potter is over clay. He can do whatever he wants to do. God is not out to make us comfortable. He is out to make something out of us. My friend Dr. Ralph West gives voice to the clay, “Stop, you are hurting me.” But the divine Artist will not stop until we are complete.
