Christians talk about giving God thanks for everything, but some skeptical observers have asked, “How can one give thanks for things that are unpleasant or sorrowful?” God’s word answers, “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28)
Let me illustrate this promise by telling you of an artist who spent a long tedious evening setting up a very expensive canvas on which he intended to create a masterpiece. All was ready; he would begin the next day.
Curiously, the artist encountered a crew of house painters exiting as he entered his rented studio early the next morning. With a quick glance around the room, he spied a large black spot on his new canvas that matched the trim color around his freshly painted windows.
After a long gaze at the spotted canvas, the old master picked up his brush and began to paint. Miraculously the black spot became the center of a beautiful flower as the artist spread the colors over the canvas. At the end of the first day, no one would have imagined that the house painters had spoiled the new canvas the night before.
The following day, this patient master was met with apologies from an electrician who was exiting the building. He confessed that in the busyness of the morning, the easel holding the canvas was tipped over, causing the painting to slide across the wet paint pallet left on his stool from the night before. A long green streak now lay across the beautiful flower.
Again, he took his place in front of what would seem to be a lost cause and studied it for a while. Finally he dipped his brush and began to paint. At the end of the day, the green streak had become part of a lush green vine that had woven its way through the flower garden and bordered the edges of the canvas. The mishaps had faded into the beauty of the picture. And so it is, as God, the Master of the universe, paints on the canvas of your life or mine.