SPRING bounces off the calendar with a smile and a shiver. I rejoice in all things made new and delight in bright green leaves, daffodils, hyacinths, and tulips reaching for the sun. I also eagerly await the dogwoods’ pink and white blossoms. Yet, when I lifted the shades this morning, the rain looked more like snow! Even spring encounters challenges to overcome winters’ chill.

I recently faced a challenge to make something new. Years ago, we discovered a sizable but rather ugly painting left in one of the homes we rented. Back then, I decided to reimagine and recreate something on this available canvas. When we repainted our family room, I used the same can of Navaho white for the canvas background. Vibrant acrylic colors brought new life to the original trees.

We carted this three-by-four-foot painting wherever we moved, and it livened up five different homes. But unfortunately, the simple dark-wood frame incurred many bumps and bruises in moving trucks, including two trips on the Alcan Highway over frost heaves. Each home came with a different color scheme, so I kept adapting this painting to match each decor. However, it never found center stage in any house.

In my present Spokane home, it filled a wall in my studio, and I enjoyed the quiet peace emanating from it. Last summer, when my son and his family relocated here from Tennessee, they asked for this painting to help decorate their new home. Their request honored me. I told them I had tweaked it to conform to various color schemes and could do the same for them. They agreed and gave me color swatches to make the match. However, they also said they liked white-trunked alders rather than the dark trunks.

The need to contrast the lightened trunks with a darker background suddenly extended the project past simple tweaking. Oil paints dry slowly, which provides more time to blend colors, so I switched to oils. To avoid mixed media meant repainting the entire canvas. Alder trees are slender and grow close together, unlike the sturdier brown trunks I painted initially. So I painted more trees, trimmed the existing ones, and added leaves according to the color swatches provided. By the time I finished “tweaking” this painting, a completely new picture had emerged. 

The metamorphosis of this painting reflects the process God uses to transform us. He does not change His original blueprint of us. We keep the same temperament or brain dominance, strengths, and non-strengths. Yet, He takes our sinful lives, transforms us by a renewal of our minds, and aligns us with His good, pleasing, and perfect will. I did not conform this painting to the old colors of my former homes but transformed it by renewing it to fit my kids’ home for their pleasure. Romans 12:1-2 tells us to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—our true and proper worship. It says not to conform to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of our mind. Then we will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

I told my son and his wife this painting needed a new frame, but they said, “Oh no, this one matches our rustic decor!” I laughed. Yes, of course, that works! That scarred frame reminded me of 2Corinthians 4:4-7, which says God’s glory shines through “jars of clay.” We, like commonplace jars of clay, contain the glory of God. A rustic frame illustrates our bruised and scarred humanity holding a masterpiece of God’s grace. Awareness of our imperfections keeps us in humble acceptance of the grace of God within us to accomplish what we could never do on our own. A frame enhances a painting, but the picture remains the focused object of interest. So life is not about us but God’s glory in everything.

By all things working together—a new color scheme, new home, and different decor, I transformed this painting into an image the recipients desired. Instead of hiding it in a back closet, they hung it center stage in their new dining room. They honored me as we are to honor the Lord as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. He places us in the center of His universe to show off His grace, His undeserved favor to broken, sinful, but repentant human beings. By receiving Jesus’ blood sacrifice for forgiveness—salvation by grace through faith, He gives us everlasting life. 

Romans 8:28-29 says, And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son. Oh, how incomparably more grand is God’s desire and design for us than anything I can ever paint. He takes our earthly sorrows and sufferings to prepare us to live with Him in an eternal place He prepares for us.

I rejoice today, not only for the inspiration God gives to and through an old painting but that the allegory is true. For it is God who works on the canvases of our lives to will and act to fulfill His good purpose. It took many years to bring my painting to full completion. In the same way, I am confident that He who began a good work in me will also finish that work (see Philippians 2:13; 1:6). And what a day that will be!

It takes something supernatural to complete the transformation in us. I admit to making some final tweaks to this picture in Photoshop (an allegory for the supernatural!) Now I may need to make those tweaks with a brush on the painting now hanging in my son’s home. In other words, as long as we live on earth, God continues His work of grace in our lives.

An eternal “spring” comes with great jubilation when God makes all things new! Endless praise will erupt triumphantly from our lips when we see the fruit of His amazing grace toward us. Our broken and bruised humanity will have disappeared, and we shall be like Him.

See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is (1Jo 3:1-2).

So we eagerly await the blossoms of spring and our complete transformation when Christ appears!