By Kristen Entwistle

I’m not a super-crafty person.  For example, when I try to paint something, it usually ends up looking like a 2-year-old’s art project that you hang on the fridge – which is cute from a 2-year-old, but not from a 24-year old.  Needless to say, my ‘art’ is usually recycled with the cardboard boxes.

Think of your life as a canvas.  Everything shows up on it – the good, the bad, and the ugly.   You try to cover up the things that you don’t want others to see – which usually ends up just making it look messy.  You try to paint over the mistakes – sometimes it works, but then the paint starts peeling.  Maybe there’s a corner of your canvas that you’ve tried to keep white.  And now it’s got smudges.  Maybe your canvas, like mine, ends up looking more like a mess than a beautiful picture.  Maybe your life, like mine, ends up looking a little messy.  You begin to wonder if God wants your mess, your brokenness.  Your messy canvas of life. But, my friend,

It’s those messes that God uses in His glorious masterpiece.  

Up close, the giant canvas of God’s plan looks a little splotchy, a little messy, a little disjointed.  Up close, it looks like it doesn’t all fit together.  But as you step further away, you begin to see it.

All of the broken pieces fit together perfectly.

All of the smudges look like they were meant to be.

All of the colors blend seamlessly together.

But it’s all made up of messy pieces.  Messy canvases.  My life.  Your life.

The great grace of God brings together all of our broken, scratched, smudged, messy pieces and puts them together in just the right way to bring about His plan, His masterpiece.

He wipes our canvas clean when we accept Him as Savior. 

And then He starts painting. 

Our canvas may still look like a mess to us.  But when God is done, when we see ourselves in the bigger picture, our messy life fits perfectly into exactly what He wanted us to be: His children.