Pictures In My Head

One of my favorite new friends is an amazing artist.  She often uses a phrase that both tickles and delights me.   I think I've finally figured out why.

What she says is:  "I can't sleep at night, because I've got pictures in my head!"

She doesn't say it in an angry or frustrated way. She says it with a sense of urgency and a sense of excitement. She reminds me of a kid on Christmas Eve:   "Can't sleep! Too happy!!"

My friend feels that God gives her the ideas for her paintings. They start to form in her head and pretty soon, she's just gotta paint them--gotta get them out of her head and on to the canvas!

It made me think about what a gift it is to be an artist.  And how great God is about communicating with us directly in our own "language,"-- whatever that is.  I told her about how often I have "stories in my head." Although I force myself to sleep through them, (LOL!) the next morning, I also feel like I 've gotta rush out and put them down on paper. I have to get them out of my head.

Then, yesterday, I started looking at her words in a different way

A group of us were together at a  morning meeting for small group leaders at church.  We all had a chance to brainstorm our ministry ideas and our overall vision for what God is doing in our Body.  What happened, was that the Husband and I came away from that meeting bursting with ideas!  Suddenly, it wasn't just about what God has called us to, but about how we could cross over into the visions of others.  How we could all work together in supporting God's bigger picture.  At one point, when we were stepping on each other's conversations with:  "Hey! We could do this, and this, and this, " I suddenly realized:  "Omigosh! I've got pictures in my head!"

Unlike my friend, I'm not going to do any painting, but like her, they DO come from God and the way I am going to put them on canvas is to take action on them.

So, that prompts me to ask you:   "Do you have pictures in your head?"  Are there things God is calling you to do?  Maybe they are things in your church Body.  Maybe they're things you've been afraid to step out on--things you've thought weren't possible because of time, money, manpower, etc.  Do you know that it's totally possible that God is putting those same "pictures" in the heads of others and that all it might take is a phone call or a conversation over coffee to get something amazing started for the Lord?

It might be something he's been calling you to for a long, long time and you've been tuning it out because you thought it was nothing more than a crazy notion.

The pictures that my friend paints are amazing. She takes comments people make and somehow forms them into full blown scenes, complete with scripture. As for me, I have trouble drawing a straight line without starting over several times.  I can't paint for the Lord.  But, of course,  the good news is that I don't have to.

God apparently has plenty of other plans for the pictures in my head.