Summer Produce
This week in class I’m going to teach my students how to do contour drawing and how to measure to get the right scale of things. We’ll be doing this by painting from a simple still life set up so I’ve been sketching several still lifes lately. Since I’ve moved my “art studio” to the bonus room (because I had to make the breakfast room back into a breakfast room for the sake of selling our house) I’ve had a lot more room to spread out. I have a table I’ve set up with a light source and I’ve been doing little fruit and veggie still lifes – I’ve really been enjoying it. I can just paint whatever I buy from the grocery that week. Sketches are so much fun to do because you’re not worried about painting a master piece – the point is to just have fun practicing your painting skills and enjoy the paint flowing on the paper. AND if the painting turns out resembling what you are painting then that’s just a plus in my book.
I chose a verse you might not expect for this post, but it deals with food so I think it’s appropriate. It’s found in Proverbs 31 which describes the wife of noble character. There’s much about this women I love and long to be, but there’s one particular verse that jumps out to me because a dear friend and mentor (Terry Franklin) pointed something beautiful out to me one day during bible study. Verse 15 says, “She gets up while it is still dark; she provides food for her family and portions for her servant girls.” Terry pointed out that this woman was a servant to her servants. That hit me like a ton of bricks. What a beautiful picture that is – this godly woman gets up extra early (“she gets up while it is still dark”) not just to take care of her family, but to graciously make breakfast for the very people who were probably hired to get up early to make the very food they are being served. Who does that – who takes the servants place – who does the servants job? It’s such a perfect picture, and sort of prophecy, of what Jesus came to do. He picked up the servants towel and served the servants and then called us to do the same. Do we do that? DO I DO THAT? I can answer pretty quickly – no. Oh how I want to be more like that though!
I have to tell you a funny story. At the bible study where Terry was teaching on this verse a lady responded that if the Lord would give her a servant she would happily serve her! Do we think about the people who are hired to do the things we don’t want to do – do you think about your trash man and go the extra mile to make his job easier? What if we cleaned up a little extra in the public bathroom instead of making a mess for someone else to clean up. What would tomorrow look like if we looked around for “servant towels” to “pick up”… we may need to get up a little earlier to do so.
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