Paintbrush Bristles

"I think they could take seseme seeds off the market and I wouldn't even care. I can't imagine five years from now, saying, 'D*** remember seseme seeds? What happened! All the buns are blank.'" --Mitch Hedberg

Often it seems like being a Christian is like being a hamburger bun with seseme seeds added. Basically ordinary, with a few speckles of Godliness (whatever that means) here and there. Maybe I'm more loving. Maybe not. Maybe I follow the ten commandments. Maybe not. Maybe I write a Christian blog about how much I love God. Maybe I work for a Christian company, or am even a pastor. Whatever. It's still life, just the same, my life, with a few changes. Why does the Christian life seem so hypocritically normal?

And when I feel this way, that the Christian life is just a bun with seseme seeds, what advice can my friends give me? Perhaps the best way to help me would be to put life in perspective with an everyday analogy (one that doesn't include fast food).

Let's say my existence is a paintbrush ready to decorate a stretched canvas of life. According to the Christianity I've known for twenty-one years, I need to give control of my brush up to the master painter, the Creator Jesus Christ. I am a brush who cannot paint the picture I was meant to paint. I need to let God help me with my strokes, or better yet, control my strokes entirely. I must be a paintbrush operated by God. THAT will make the difference.

Uh, no.

As helpful as that analogy might be in some contexts, it's a terrible analogy for our relationship to God and for his Kingship in our lives. In my life, it has led to either trying to just follow the rules or living my life by new principals. When Jesus said he makes all things new, I think he meant more than having different values. God is our Shepherd (John 10) and our Helper (John 14:16), yes, but he is also our Savior (Luke 2:11), our Foundation (1 Corinthians 3), our Dwelling Place (Psalm 90), and the Bread of Life (John 6:35).

And humans? We give ourselves too much credit. I am not a paintbrush. At most, I am just the bristles of a paintbrush, with no handle or ferrule. I cannot paint a picture. I am disconnected. I am blown by the wind. I have fallen apart. Any marks I make are feeble and faint. It's not the wrong picture I'm painting, it's not even a picture. David, in Psalm 38:5-8 sings the following:

"5 My wounds fester and are loathsome
because of my sinful folly.
6 I am bowed down and brought very low;
all day long I go about mourning.
7 My back is filled with searing pain;
there is no health in my body.
8 I am feeble and utterly crushed;
I groan in anguish of heart."

You decide. Does David sound more like a paintbrush, or just the bristles of a paintbrush? I would say the latter. But that is the beauty of what Jesus does. He connects us back to Him, and then (and only then) do we become part of a whole paintbrush. And God controls my strokes, yeah, but not because I'm giving him permission, but because I am happily latched to Him, who swings me around on the edge of his fingers, transforming me and painting a breathtaking landscape, with the beauty of the stars and the moon and the rainforests merely being his warm-up.

It is from this perspective that I now step out into life. I am beginning to believe that it is when we find out we are only bristles without God, not a whole paintbrush, that our Christian lives can start to really look transformed. It is then that we are motivated not to pick whatever career we want and just try to praise God with it, but to Go wherever Jesus sends us, and to plan on surprises. It is then that we begin to love with with a love that is not our own. It is then that we stop trusting ourselves and start trusting something more powerful. It is then that the seseme seeds go off the market.