Inside the Lines

Trust in the Lord always, for the Lord God is the eternal Rock.

Isaiah 26:4 (NLT)

I was generally pretty good at hearing directions when I was a kid. I say “hearing” because I often times was not good at following directions – or I was incapable of following directions. For example, in second grade we were often given coloring sheets to do during our art class. These sheets consisted of pictures of houses, landscapes, or people that needed to be colored in. Luckily, we each had our boxes of Crayola crayons (mine had 64 different colors!) with which to mark our next masterpiece. The instructions? Color inside the lines. Needless to say, I could hear the directions, but often found myself unable to keep my crayon from drifting outside the lines. It seems the harder I tried, the worse the problem became. I pretty much gave up. I knew I was a horrible artist. My masterpieces looked like yard sale junk.

However, my teacher took an interest in helping her floundering Picasso. As the school year progressed, she would come to my desk at art time and give me instructions, and then demonstrate how to do those instructions. At first, I wasn’t able to get the hang of it. I still colored outside the lines. However, as she took the time to guide me, coach me, and believe in me, I eventually mastered coloring inside the lines. In fact, we had an “art show” later in the year in which I placed third out of my whole class.

As I look back on this episode in my life, I realize a few things. 1) The more I closely followed the directions of my instructor, the better my abilities became. 2) The teacher never stopped believing in me. 3) I began to trust the teacher and began following her way of doing things rather than just going my own way.

We have a great, great Teacher in God. He is the Master when it comes to, well, everything. Painting? No problem. Create a man from dust? Yup. Form the entire universe in one day? No problem. In other words, He knows everything about everything because He created everything.

When He calls us to follow His directions, He speaks from a place of authority. He knows what He is doing. As we follow His commands, our abilities, through Him grow, and our trust in Him deepens. And, let’s not forget, He believes in each one of us. We need to believe in Him.