God Loves Refrigerator Art!

 

The above picture was drawn for me by one of my grandkids. I get at least two or three different pieces of artwork every time they come over to play.  One of my grandkids absolutely loves to draw and he is so happy when he has a chance to sit and create a masterpiece for me, his Mimi. I have quite a collection of these masterpieces from both my kids when they were young and now from my grandkids. 

If I used only a critical art eye, I might look at the picture, shrug, and say "This is a mess. What is this about? A couple of airplanes, some scribbling, boxes with letters in them. It's pretty bad and needs work."  But I don't say that at all!  When my grandson hands this to me with a huge smile on his face, I gaze at it in wonder. I examine all the little things he put on there just for me. I tell him, it's the most beautiful thing I've seen and I give him a big hug. Then, I promptly hang it on my fridge for all to see! I love it!  A few months later, I take down all the pictures, put the name and date on the back, and save them in a box. That's how special these are to me. 

No, the picture is not good. It isn't art. It has mistakes. It's not perfect. But it was done for me by my grandkids and that makes it better than any perfect art I could buy in the gallery!!

Do you think the Lord feels any less joy and approval at the things we do for Him? He is not a critic. He is our Father. We may feel like failures. We may think that we keep messing up. We may believe our efforts to be good Christians are pathetic. We may even wonder what He sees in us at all! We may think that surely He is disappointed in us. 

BUT THAT ISN'T TRUE.  As long as we are sincere with Him. As long as we keep trying and offer Him our efforts from a pure heart of love for Him, He loves our gifts to Him. He loves them so much, He hangs our efforts on His heavenly refrigerator for all to see! 

Now, if my grandson felt obligated to draw me a picture and sat down to do it begrudgingly and then came to me with it and sort of tossed it my way with a sigh that he did what I wanted, and then he took off to play. I wouldn't care if it was a masterpiece that I could see for a million dollars, it would be meaningless to me.

It is our love Jesus wants. He wants our efforts to please Him to come from a heart of love for Him. As long as we try, He doesn't expect us to be perfect. He fact, He knows we won't be. He already knows we will mess up now and then and our artwork will be full of squiggly lines and nonsensical objects. But He doesn't care. He's a Father and He loves you more than you could ever realize. 

It is that Love that if we could but grasp, we would never fear anything again. Because a Father who hangs our pathetic efforts proudly on His fridge would never ever allow anything to happen to us that would do us harm. 

If you're like me, I feel like I'm never doing enough, that I'm always lacking in some way, always messing up, that I'm not good enough. But if we could grasp how much God loves us and that He doesn't look at our weaknesses and failures, He only looks at our hearts, then maybe we could all find that peace and true rest we long for in this crazy, fallen world! 

Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God!  1 John 3:1