A Tender Painting and How It Traveled

This is so cool I just had to put it together in one post. Some time ago, during the Jesus Family Center arts festival in November 2007, they let children (and some adults!) come up front and paint pictures during the church service. The pastor's wife painted this beautiful picture of a child's hand on top of an adult's hand:



I thought the picture was beautiful and moving, and showed a tenderness I couldn't put into words... especially if you think of the big hand as God's hand.

Fast-forward four years to the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in northeastern Japan. A few months after the disaster I felt called to go to Fukushima and paint pictures for disaster survivors, particularly for nuclear refugees. I would pray for someone and God would give me a picture. Sometimes it took some time as I asked God what to paint.

Once when praying for a pregnant woman, God told me to paint the picture that the pastor's wife had painted in 2007 and give it to her, and to add the scripture from Jeremiah 1:5 -- "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you."



I painted as quickly as I could while the mother was getting supplies with her mom outside, and then I had a fellow volunteer give it to her (because I had to work on another person's painting). When she read the verse she exclaimed, "The Bible really says that??"

In later trips volunteering in Fukushima, I was impressed to paint that picture again four more times (one with a cute variation) for four more mothers!



I just love how God works! That original painting made by the pastor's wife... she had no idea that it would go all the way across Japan to be a blessing to five different mothers and their families, to let them know how God loves them and their children even before they're born!

Drawing Hearts With Joanna

I spent some time drawing with my daughter Joanna shortly before she turned three years old. She loves drawing, but her progress has been a bit slower than Timo. She's actually incredibly focused and persistent, but very stubborn and only wants to do what she wants to do, haha!

I let her use my ink and she made most of the picture on the bottom, and I put the heart on top of it, and then a lot of water to mix up the colors and make it look more solid. Then she wanted to draw more, but she wanted me to draw! Just to make her happy I relented. =)

She wanted another heart, and I put that in the middle. Then I think she fed me some colors and asked me to do something else, and in that way I did the pictures surrounding the heart with the colors she gave me. I just wanted to paint something cute that she could understand, and didn't plan on what I was going to paint. But the result really looks like it had been planned, I think! It turned out to be quite a picture of God's love!