Scars and Mistakes of Impatience

The Jer. 17.7-9 painting before I boogered it up

This morning I was looking over a watercolor painting I made yesterday. I saw a pencil line and decided to erase it. The bit of graphite vanished, but so did some of the green background. I dipped a brush in water and loaded the bristles with paint. My touch-up wouldn't have been a big deal, had it not been in an area where I had text with very concentrated black paint. If I had thought it through, I would have known better than to swipe over the dark paint; but in my haste, I ended up smearing the area. Immediately I blotted the area with a piece of magic eraser sponge which lifted the majority of the paint--especially the green. (Whew!) Crisis averted. Except that I screwed up. Again. I tried to fix the area while the abused paper was still wet. The fresh black paint spider-webbed and bled all over the roughed up area. Now it looked even worse than when I first "ruined" it. The sponge didn't pick up as much of the paint the second time. The paper was even more mangled. But I finally stopped trying to fix it. Iknew I had to wait for the paper to dry.

Through each of the mistakes and ever-increasing consequences, I thought about how the situation mirrored life. God tells us "I have a plan for you." We say, "Marvelous! Hurry up!" We get impatient, or think God has forgotten us, or He really must not have meant what he said. So we take matters into our own hands. We make a mess of things. Then we cry for help. "Gah! I broke it! ...I'm sorry," we sheepishly admit. "I still have a plan for you," He tells us. But there are consequences for our disobedience, impatience, and pride. We will have scars where there should have been tattoos commemorating God's faithfulness to His promise. The victory will come, in the proper timing, but the marks of our failings will be a permanent reminder, the baggage of our fallen state. But even those stumblings can be a testament. A many-versed song of the moments when God would not allow our failings to undermine His plan. His faithfulness to uphold His promises will be a song of victory even though we as humans seem only to be able to write songs of lament in our failings.


So while I wait for the paper to dry, I know the painting will not turn out unblemished. It will look better, but not perfect. And every time I see the scarred surface, I will remember the lesson I learned: be patient...do things in their proper time. It works out better that way.