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Being school holidays, I managed to make it to ‘most’ of the morning service this week. Lynton Allan was the special guest - a man gifted in drawing/painting and telling stories in a way that points us to the realities of God and faith.

It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. Lynton started telling the story of the beach where he used to live. He struggled with the “sit down and open you Bible” type quiet time but instead found prayer and meditation much easier soaked in the beauty of creation. As he told this story, he drew a beautiful beach scene out of pastels.

But then, seemingly in the middle of it, he scribbled big brown marks all over it. Life, Lynton said, always contained the bad, hard, painful things, that made a mess of an otherwise beautiful picture. However, God can even make a ruined picture more beautiful than before.

Not speaking another word, Lynton played a CD and then proceded to turn these ugly marks in to trees, shrubs, birds and other elements that made the scene simply beautiful.

Imagine what God, the most creative of all beings, can do with a life that we think is ruined?!

A powerful visual message. A good day for a cartoonist to make it to morning church!