Values and Grace

What are shared values? Are they seeing exactly the same thing, exactly the same way? What about grace? Where is grace in all of this? Do we focus on what could have happened? What could have been? Or do we look at "what is" and determine if we give grace to someone that does not share our values? There are a whole lot of shades of grey here. It is important to decide how much "shading" you want to accept in your life and then start adding the colors in. Otherwise your landscape called "life" will be simply be colorless and lifeless.

I think of values as the primary colors on the landscape of life. If you have good solid values you bring good solid colors into your life. Those that do not have good solid values often bring the darker shades, such as black. You can mix black with a color on your pallet, but what comes from that mixing? Black and more black. Sometimes just a smudge of black will create some darkness to the color, but the color itself remains. However, the more black you mix in, the closer the color comes to black and the less the color remains true to its origin. Grace is like introducing white to the color pallet. White brightens, it brings more intensity to the picture. It contrasts and it lightens. White is the only hue that can lighten black and change black, but it never completely remove black. Black is always in the picture when you introduce it. You can try to lighten it, you can try to take the focus from it, but in the end it always remains forever on the landscape.

Now what? What do we do once we have made a choice that introduces this blackness into our life? Do we ignore the introduction? Do we just pretend it never was black? Do we try and paint it as though it was a lighter color or somehow different? No. In order for us to introduce the white we first have to know that what we are looking at is indeed black and needs the introduction. We need to examine the darkness and determine just how much white is needed to lighten the darkness to a place where it is no longer the center of attention on the landscape. We need to evaluate what black has done to the other colors on the canvas and how to create contrast. We will never be able to remove the black from the other colors completely, but knowing it is there and what is needed to offset black is essential.

What is tempting is to leave our painting and to paint on the landscape of someone else. Our color pallet is dripping with color that we just can't WAIT to paint with. We take out our brush, dip it in the color, determined to remove another person's blackness, we find that our color has no effect on their canvas, with the exception of making the darkness blacker. We try again and again. We think to ourselves "This HAS to work. It always has worked for me." Then we try our white and find that again we paint more darkness on to their canvas. What is happening? How come this is coming out worse, rather then better? Isn't MY grace sufficient? We must ask ourselves, were we asked to paint on their landscape? Do we know the formulation of the paint needed? The answer is that our paints can be painted on our landscapes, but each person has their own paint set given by their Father. The Father knows each child's paint formulation and what is the formula for one may not be the formulation for another. Without permission that comes from knowing the other artist or permission from the Father, we can never paint anything but black. We can step into the role of Father or Creator, but we will never have enough grace, our efforts will never be sufficient.

Then again sometimes God gives to us each another person that has the same paints that we do. They come into our lives by His introduction. He allows us to be married and then we get to paint on each others canvas. Then for a while he allows us to paint together on the landscape of our children. However, we all still have the ability to throw large amounts of blackness on the canvas of the same landscapes that we are gifted with. As co-artists on each other's paintings we need to carefully point our the darkness and help to determine how much grace will be needed to take the focus off the dark holes in the canvas. Some of us come to each other with large amounts of blackness and the other co-artist needs  to share  generously their white paint of grace.

Grace is important. If it weren't for our desire to see different shades of color then grace would not be necessary. Grace is essential, and if it were not for the black we would never completely appreciate all the colors in our lives. We do not seek out the black but it is always there. We cannot make an excuse for the darkness, we cannot completely erase the darkness, we will always be adjusting our landscape to balance out the darkness; However, we should always seek out the white in our lives as it is the white, the grace, that allows for us to enjoy our landscape of life. Enjoy your life employ more grace than darkness and you will paint your landscape and the landscapes of those whom God has entrusted you with values and grace that is sufficient. Be open to other artists, be willing to wait for the approval of others, but when the time is right, then paint generously with all the colors of your rainbow and mix in a whole lot of grace.