Duck, duck, goose

The burly young man quickly sketched in his goose and then began to apply the thick layer of pastel.
"Wait!" I called out, and my student stopped mid stroke.
"Before you apply the pastel, which can't be easily corrected, is your drawing as good as you can make it?"
He glanced at it.
"For example," I said in the silence of a teachable moment, "Right now you have drawn the body beautifully but look at your photo of a goose. See that long, snake like neck? You have drawn a duck neck."
"I like ducks," he said, and began to apply the pastels.
"Stop!" I begged, "You can do this. It is not a duck. It is a goose. Look at that long neck and correct your duck. Make him a goose."
The young man flipped to a clean sheet of paper.
"You don't need to start all over," I advised, "Look at the curve here. You  have made it an opposite curve. Do you see that?"
He did.
"And now just lengthen and skinny up that neck..... then you will have a goose."
He sighed, and I suspected he didn't believe me. Also, turning his duck into a goose would require some effort and he wasn't quite sure it was worth it. After all, he didn't have to tell a soul that what he was really trying to draw was a goose, not a duck. But I knew he could do it, and I knew every time he looked at his duck, he would see a failed goose if he didn't deal with it.

He made one of the changes and then began to color in with pastel again.
"Not yet!" I called, "It is still a duck neck!"
He again sighed and this time put aside the pastels, and one by one, began to apply the corrections.
A few minutes later I glanced over.
"That's it!" I exulted, "Now you have a goose!"
"Yes," he agreed, and smiled as he began to color it in with his pastels, finally.

I try to get away with ducks when what I really want is a goose too, so I understood his hesitancy.  Settling for less than what is our best or sometimes what we know is right is much easier than correcting and striving for excellence. It eeks into every moment of life if we let it, that tendency to settle for less than what we know we should. Yet in the back of my mind, every time I do that, there is a nagging conviction that I have let the fullness of what life could be slip past me.

In the book of Revelations, God chastises His people not for sin, but for being "lukewarm".  He would rather have us be hot or cold than just complaisant. It is true in faith, in worship, in relationships, and in drawing geese.

Revelation 3:15-17 (New International Version)

¹⁵I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! ¹⁶So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth. ¹⁷You say, 'I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.' But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.