Welcome to 2017!! My last post of 2016 was on how we carry pain, and it was the most viewed in the 18 months since I started blogging, at over 810 views so far. (See it at ‘Fences’: What do you do with pain entering 2017? ) Not sure what it means that a post on pain was the most popular! Perhaps it speaks of what the year 2016 was like for many.

As this new year starts, I’ve had a song on my mind. It is by John Michael Talbot, one of my favorite singers. The title is Empty Canvas, and I’ve put the lyrics below as well as the link to it on Youtube. It expresses well for me an attitude and state of heart I want to cultivate more deeply this year, and the rest of my life. Being an empty canvas can of course be extremely frightening, especially if you don’t have a trust relationship with the Painter. But it can also be a waiting with expectancy, knowing that the surprises that may await, even a painting with darker colors, are for an even more glorious revealing. Read the words slowly below, and also listen to the beautiful tones of Talbot’s voice in the Youtube video. If you resonate with it, make these words your prayer as 2017 begins.

Empty canvas waits before the Painter, waits to be the painting it must be. Unto this end it has rightly been created to reflect rightly what the Painter sees.

A beauty that will surely find its life within its dying so another might be born again.

And in this constant death a constant beauty is created within a constant love that never ends.
Jesus is the Master Painter.
And the Holy Spirit is the Master’s brush
to be dipped within the colors that portray the Father’s love,
that the canvas of our life might know the Master’s touch,
to portray the beauty of the Master’s brush.
So an empty canvas waits before the Painter,
empty canvas destined to be hung within the gallery once it has been created.
Will the canvas bear the beauty of the Son?”
(“Empty Canvas”, song lyrics by John Michael Talbot and Terry Talbot)