When a Kindergartner Replaces a Kinkade

Undoubtedly, the print before me met somebody’s aesthetic standards.  Actually, the very fact of it being a print – mass produced, framed and sold – testifies of its somewhat universal appeal. It caters to the artistic taste buds of a lot of people. Before it, however, I am flat. Indifferent. Unmoved.

Am I just being a snob? Or is there something more here?

Then, I glance at the artwork I have in mind to replace it with. There is not a question in my mind that this one is not going to a printing press. But, in my eyes, it’s amazing and beautiful and…  priceless. My heart leaps just thinking of it.  It’s one of a kind. It’s a unique expression of something of the heart and soul of the little hands that made it. It’s the Mona Lisa of our family’s personal Louvre.

So, I open the tube of black, and squeeze the paint out.

No turning back now.

Seeing the black scar on the print makes it final.

Irreversible.

I feel like I’ve just ripped up a perfect Thomas Kinkade to make room for the scrawl of a Kindergartner.

As the paint does its work,  I think how sometimes it seems like God does something similar.  He takes a thick brush dripping gooey with heartbreak, with failure, with loss and disappointment and spreads the hues of midnight across the picture-perfect, cookie-cutter print of our lives.

What are You doing?!!! We object. You just ruined my perfect picture!!

I don’t need your mass produced perfect picture, cranked out of some religious printing shop, my dear one. All I need is a solid, even dinged up frame… and a simple matting of your life  to display My True Original.


We who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. 2 Corinthians 4:11