“I was blind but now I see!” (John 9:25b)

I have been taking art lessons for the past couple of years. In fact, I started shortly after moving into this Chaplain role. I didn’t think that I had any talent for art but just wanted to participate with some friends of mine as a lark. My teacher says he can teach anyone who can hold a brush, and I guess I have proved him to be right. And one of his first instructions is always to “Paint what you see.”

There are skills that one can learn in order to paint all types of paintings from portraits to landscapes. However, the first and most important skill he has taught me is to see details, the nuances of an image. And it never fails, the longer I study the image, the more I see. A shadow here, a reflection there, a highlight where the sun is coming through. The better I see, the better the final work of art. To truly see is something that can be learned, and like any learned skill, practice helps us to improve.

This gift of seeing is what I have appreciated most about learning to paint, and it has made me realize the importance of seeing as well as using my eyes to listen to people around me. You see, in the past I was more often guilty of thinking about myself when I with others and not really paying attention. “What do I think, what do I want to say, how do I want to come across?” Or worse, I might have been thinking about something else altogether. Too late I would realize that I had missed an opportunity to learn something about the other person during our interaction. If I focus on seeing inside my head while painting, my canvas doesn’t reflect the truth about the object I am observing. It works the same with my conversation. If I focus on my internal thoughts while the other person is talking, my response won’t reflect what the person needs to hear from me.

Blind Bartimaeus could see that Jesus was the son of God even though he was blind (Mark 10:46-52). Meanwhile, the chief priests and teachers of the law had fine eyesight but still didn’t see that Jesus was the Messiah (Mark 10:32-34). How could they have missed something so important?

So, I recommend taking to heart what my art teacher constantly counsels, “Paint what you see.”

In Christ,

Judy