It's nearly 1am, which means that finals week has officially begun. My first final is for my painting class and is more of a review of my work than an actual test. For class we were assigned to paint a number things including a lot of fruit, some paintings of our hands, and a few self-portraits (I also painted a My Little Pony as a still-life, but that's another blog post entirely...) Looking over my work from the semester earlier tonight, I realized that I did not have all of my paintings done so I finished a few up. One was a final abstract self-portrait, which ended up looking nothing like what I had hoped for (probably because I didn't know what I had hoped for it to look like in the first place) and the other was the painting above, which I painted while watching Waking Life (a very philosophical movie). I decided to paint this self-portrait without looking at myself. I didn't want it to look realistic, but I wanted to try to capture myself as I remembered myself. I find it so funny that no matter how many times I may look at myself in the mirror, I never seem to be able to remember exactly how I look. Does that ever happen to you? Writing this, I am reminded of James 1:22-25 which reads,
"Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he will be blessed in what he does."
Since this is my blog and I can write whatever I want...and since I just finished watching a very thought provoking movie, I am going to let my thoughts becomes words and let you in on what is going on in my mind as I reflect on all of this. So, I painted this image of myself from what I can remember about myself. There are the obvious things-my blond hair, blue eyes, the length of my hair, and so on...but then there are the things that I would need to really study in order to interpret correctly in this painting, such as the location of my freckles or the way the light in the room reflects in my eyes. What I get from all this in reference to faith is that maybe the only way to know God more deeply is to really study who He is. Even more than that...What I feel that this verse in James is saying is that in order to really know God and to relate with Him, it is essential to hear about who He is, but even more so...it is essential do what He would do. Since Jesus is the word of God (John 1:1) and James 1:22-25 is telling us to not merely listen to the word, but also do what it says, it seems that we are commanded to listen to what Jesus has to say, but even more importantly do what he says. I think that choosing to do rather than simply listen is where true faith resides. Anyone can go to listen to someone's teachings, but actually acting on them is a different level of existence entirely. It is said later in the book of James that "faith without deeds is useless" (James 2:20) and I believe that! Having faith, but not acting on it would be like reading every issue of Self Magazine ever published, but not exercising a day in my life! I could go on and on about what the best foods to eat or the best exercises to do were, but if I never did what I read about would you believe me? I want my life to be a living and breathing and acting example of the truth that I believe in, which is Jesus Christ. I hope that I didn't lose you back at the third sentence into this post...and even if I did, it was fun getting here.
