Bloody Masterpiece

My first job of note was as the Assistant Director of Women’s Ministry at what you might call a “mega church”.  I already worked there as an Admin. Assist. in Women’s and Single’s Ministry, but felt ready to move on.  So I enrolled in a Master’s Program to further my education while I looked for jobs.  It was my amazing boss and mentor that suggested I consider the open position of Assist. Director.  It was mine.  To be honest, it was a dream come true.  If you had asked me my dream job, which my dad had done while I was in college, this is what I wanted to do… but where do you find a job that includes Bible teaching, working with women, prayer, speaking, spending time with God, traveling?  You find it right where God leads you.

Funny thing was, I may have had the biblical knowledge and training needed for the position, but I hadn’t actually done anything yet.  I had been out of college for about five years (give or take), was never married, had no children, led a fairly sheltered life – simply had not experienced life.  After three and a half years, my new husband whisked me away to the Holy Land so he could further his education.  I left my job with sadness.  I loved that job.  I love the atmosphere, the people I worked with on a daily basis, the ministry… I was sad to leave.

The interesting thing is, once I left this job… the job where I should have had the wisdom of life experiences to be a better (leader, counselor, teacher, etc.) – that I actually gained my experience.  Since I left that job almost 10 years ago, I have moved 10 times, moved and lived overseas in Jerusalem and the West Bank, worked in and traveled around a militarized zone, witnessed warfare, had five children (three overseas and two in the United States), experienced the death of one of my children, had post partum depression, lived with a lack of running water for most of a summer, experienced a bad financial investment, experience low income, had to endure the joys of raising financial support to do what we do overseas, have on several occasions HATED my life and sunk into despair, have traveled all around the world and have LOVED my life at the same time.

My home church (where I had once been Assist. Director of Women’s Ministry) had their missions conference about a year and a half ago and I was invited to speak to one of the Bible study groups.  I had been struggling with the whole issue of finding my security in God and as I was sharing, I realized I could not paint that missionary/ministry picture with beautiful brush strokes as one would think of a masterpiece.  Mine looked dark and jagged, unfinished, ugly… it was full of sweat, tears and spattered with blood here and there, and I broke down and cried.

Remember when you were young and missionaries would come to your church and tell you about their life… all the amazing stories?  I remember and thought, that sounds incredible to be able to experience God work like that…  Yet somehow as we have gotten older we realized that, no, I don’t want to be a missionary.  I don’t want to give it all up to live in a grass hut and beat grain for 8 hours a day to make bread and fetch water in a bucket.  So we put God over here on Sunday morning for an hour or two, or not… and depend on our own resources and do what everyone else does.  Yet, in the back of our mind is the thought that IF I surrender my life completely to God, that grass hut is exactly where He will ask me to go. BECAUSE, in essence, God wants me to be miserable.  BECAUSE, we think that if we like or enjoy something, that God, as the cosmic killjoy, will take it away.

That is foolish… yet, there is/are elements of truth buried in those statements.  I have learned that God accepts us where we are.  He does not ask for all immediately, and maybe never.  But it is a process.  He stretches and tests us… puts us under fire, if you will.  He REFINES us.  You may have heard the story known as The Refiner’s Touch.  I have attached it below.  He knows us better than we know us.  He knows our breaking point and frequently it is further than we could ever imagine it to be.  But it will not crush us.  Do you trust the POTTER?  Do you trust the SILVERSMITH?  Do you trust the ARTIST to create YOUR Bloody Masterpiece?  Because this WILL involve blood.  If not your own, then remember His Son who shed his blood for you.  “There is a legend of an artist who had found the secret of a wonderful red that no other artist could imitate.  He never told the secret of the color, but after his death an old wound was discovered over his heart.  It revealed the source of the matchless hue in his pictures.  The moral of the legend is that no great achievement can be made, no lofty goal attained, nor anything of great value to the world’s accomplished, except at the cost of the heart’s blood.” (Streams in the Desert, Nov. 7)

Suffering is an integral part of life.  It defines us, makes us, changes us.  And despite the experiences I have had, they have made me who I am – for better or worse.  I hope for the better.  And the way I look at it, my life may be bloody, but it will be a masterpiece made by my Maker!

NOW I feel I have something to contribute to the work of ministry.