NO Excuses -- Do hard things

A very faith-filled friend asked me to illustrate a book he wants to write. I have illustrated my own books, but have never taken on a project of quite the complexity as this one will be. For one thing, it is quite scientific. I had never drawn a DNA strand or the xray view of human organs before yesterday. Drawing a rainbow dog wearing a Santa hat, like I did just for fun for this blog, is much more to my liking. I don't mind messing up my own future...but I really don't want to mess up my friend's future as an author. He is one of the best "defenders of the faith" I know, and his book will reflect that Godly focus. I want badly to do it justice! So while my typical approach to art is to just slap it on there and hope the audience uses their imagination to make it look the way it should, for this book I will need to be careful. To be honest, I don't like being careful. Nonetheless, I am excited and I think I can do it, but it is going to require a much greater attention to detail and perfection than I am used to.

So yesterday he sent me his rough idea for the first page. He sent the text and I was supposed to translate that to my pictorial vision. I spent about ten hours...straight...doing my sketch on the iPad of what I thought might work. Half the time was spent trying to draw a straight line. It took me quite some time to discover how to work the automatic straight line drawer of the art app I was using. It took me another hour to figure out how to draw a perfect square. Again, there is a tool on the app that will do that for me, but I hadn't known about it till I spent 2 hours trying to freehand a perfect square.

So I learned a lot, but it took the entire day and the picture isn't even done! And I don't even know if this is the direction he wants me to go. I may have to start from scratch once we both figure out what will be best.

However, I will not give up. I found inspiration to tackle hard things this week in the story of a King. I am reading about the kings of Israel in my Bible study each day this week, and just finished reading about Joash. Joash was 7 years old when he became king! His grandmother was very wicked. She seized power when Joash's father died, and then proceeded to kill off all her children and grandchildren, prospective successors to the throne! Not the usual kindly old Mee-Ma! Fortunately for Joash, his aunt hid him and in the end, his wicked grandmother was overthrown. Joash, a little boy of 7 years old, ascended to the throne.

One of the first things he did as king was to renovate the house of The Lord. He could have fixed up his palace, or maybe his playroom being as he was barely out of diapers. Instead, from a young age, he took on the enormous responsibility and uncharted territory of being a king who followed God, and became one of Israel's few GOOD kings. He certainly didn't have good examples in his parentage to guide him. But from what I can tell, Joash didn't make excuses -- not for his lousy parents, his murderous grandmother, his youth and inexperience, or the fallen nature of his wayward, back-sliding people. He just kept his eyes on God, and did his best. He wasn't perfect, but he was good, and that was saying a lot for that time period.

It reenforces one of the most astounding and encouraging truths of God. God never seems to use our strengths. God perennially chooses the weak, the lowly, the struggling, the frail, the tired, the damaged, the young, even the new-born babes to accomplish His purpose. He is forever driving home the point that it is not in our own power that we are expected to do anything. God's power is sufficient for all He asks us to do. Like Joash, we have to remember to keep our focus and trust on God, and He will take it from there.

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Joash was seven years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem forty years. His mother’s name was Zibiah; she was from Beersheba. Joash did what was right in the eyes of the Lord all the years of Jehoiada the priest. (2 Chronicles 24:1, 2 NIV)




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