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Trust the healing
Sometimes when we are working through and praying about a challenge, we may feel frustrated or even fearful if we don’t get the healing results we are hoping for right away. It is most important at those times to keep working, keep praying, and trust that our prayers are effective, no matter how bleak the human picture may appear—knowing that God’s law is in operation, actively working to bless us.
This point came home to me in a very clear and unexpected way last fall when I took an all-day private workshop on oil painting. Since I was a novice, my instructor patiently taught me how to first make a general charcoal sketch, just getting the basic shapes of my subject. Then, after I learned about the color wheel, she taught me the next step of determining the values of light and shading—filling those into the drawing using a combination of white and marine blue paints, simply getting the light and shadows of the painting correct. When that process was done we moved on to working with colors to complete the painting. Under my instructor’s tutelage, I was able to finish a fairly decent little seascape that day.
When I got home, I was eager to pull out some photographs I had taken while hiking the old Tokaido Highway in Japan (now a beautiful path through the hills and forest), and I selected a favorite photo I had taken of one of the little post towns still standing from that era. It showed a lovely street sloping downward, shaded by trees, backed by mountains, and lined with the old traditional buildings, with a lone couple walking down the street. The lady held a red Japanese umbrella to shade herself from the sun. I decided to try out my new painting skills using this photograph as my subject.
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