Last week Roman brought home some artwork from church. He handed it to me with his pasty 2 year old, cheese cracker stained mammoth hands. He was grinning so wide I thought his face would cramp..and he handed me this…
With more gusto than I could have even come up with looking at an original Renoir, I stammered, “ I loooovveee it!!!! Good job, sweetheart! Let’s hang it here on the fridge for everyone to see…”
And then in his limited, mumbled ,toddler vocabulary he furred his eyebrows together making an upside down V, and then promptly grabbed my hand all while yanking his 2 year old masterpiece out of my grip and he stammered, “no,dis way, MAMA!”
After realizing I had rocked his little world by holding his work of genius the wrong way, I immediately held it the “right “ way. And ever so humbly taking my two year old verbal spanking, I replied, “ Oh, I am so sorry, honey,I was confused. Thank you for telling mama that I was wrong. Everyone would have been looking at it the wrong way when they passed by the fridge if you had not corrected me.” Without delay I placed it at its correct position in the center of the fridge at its new post. Then Roman took a couple steps back, with hands on his hips and one croc forward with his big brown eyes fixed straight ahead on his little creation and he replied, “ nowwww, dat’s jus wight”.
In that little moment between the two of us I was reminded of the fact that we as believers so often have the picture of Jesus upside down. We put the gospel the wrong side up on the refrigerator of life and cause all that walk by to view the gospel upside down—wreaking havoc on lives.
Then one day when the winds of life blow and the ground below us trembles the picture falls down. Then we pick it back up to put it back in its original place. But, this time we pause. We step back and look at the picture one more time. Its looks the same, but we see something in it that we never saw before…and then we have a spiritual revelation:
The winds of the storm that we thought we would never survive have actually put the painting into the “right” position. We would have never known that we had placed it the wrong way unless the winds had moved it…And in an instant, we put it right side up. And then something not of this world happens. Those that walk by don’t just see it..no, they stop and their lives are forever changed.
Do you have the picture right side up?
