Love’s Canvas

Life’s Canvas

For the moment, substitute the word life for love in the above quote.  Each of us is given at birth a perfectly white canvas to decorate with the days of our lives.  Every day something new is added; for good, or bad.  Depending on what we put on the canvas, we could end up with the equivalent of Vincent Van Gogh’s Wheatfield and Mountains, or The Harvest—or something much more dark and dreary—possibly even frightening—like Pablo Picasso’s famous work Guernica, which depicts the horrors of war.

The little choices we make every single day create our work of art.  At the completion of our lives, we return to our Maker with a completed canvas.  You might say it is our gift to Him in return for the great gift of life and the blessings He showers on us.  While Picasso was a brilliant artist, and his work had an admirable purpose, if someone were to give me a piece of art as a gift, I would much rather display Van Gogh’s The Harvest in my living room than Picasso’s Guernica.  On the flip side, if I am the one doing the giving, I want the receiver to find many hours of peace and solace in the gift they receive from me; and I don’t think Guernica would accomplish that goal.

Love’s Canvas

What is life?  What is the purpose of life?  Why are we here?  The answer to all those questions is simple; love.  Life is a timeframe in which to learn how to love so that we can live in peace and joy in the eternities with our families.  Therefore, life really is love.  They are one in the same.

As the artist of our life, we choose how much love to put on our canvas.  We choose the colors, tints, and hues which turn our masterpiece into one of love and peace, or one of darkness and fright.  Love is light; not darkness.

There are some wonderfully bright works of art by Russian Leonid Afremov which inspire me.  I want my canvas to be full of bright colors and happiness, such as Afremov’s Misty Melody, Magic Flowers, After the Date, or The Night Trolley.  Afremov uses splotches or squares of bright colors fit together in patterns to make joy and love burst from the canvas.  I want to jump inside the picture and place myself smack dab in the middle of the scene.  I want to ride that night trolley, and be the woman who is walking down the street arm in arm with my sweetheart after the date.

Love’s canvas is joyful, light, happy, and wondrous.  I ache to paint love’s joy on the canvas which I will give to Him.

Art Class

No famous artist ever painted a masterpiece without practice—no more than Bach, Beethoven, or Mozart created stunningly beautiful music without it.  They spent their entire lives perfecting their craft.  Why then, should we think to create our life’s canvas of love without daily art classes?

Just as we were given the blank canvas as a gift at birth, we were given tools to perfect our craft. Every color of the rainbow is at our fingertips, along with every brush and artist tool.  We were given special spiritual gifts, and gifts of character and personality.  We were given mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, neighbors, friends, co-workers—and even enemies—to help us perfect the love to brush on the canvas.

Every trial we endure and every choice we make determines the colors, tints, and hues of our masterpiece.  The picture changes daily, maybe even hourly, as we respond to the adversities in our lives.  Adversity comes as darkness, but can be lightened by how we respond to it.  Wallowing in adversity intensifies the darkness, while working through adversity separates the mist of darkness, purifies it, and splashes color of humor and joy—if we let it.

Painting our canvas takes practice.  As mistakes are made, the turpentine of the atonement can be used to clean up the mess so we can begin anew.  The canvas looks somewhat different each day as we continue to work and blend the colors together.  The more love we put into our craft, the brighter it becomes.

Supply Cabinet

It is difficult to be creative when your studio is disorganized.  Life tends to create messes.  Sometimes all we need is a filing system and a good supply cabinet to help us prioritize and organize.  No filing system ever worked properly without a good secretary to place the items into the files.  No supply cabinet ever worked that wasn’t designed with the needs of the artist in mind.

My supply cabinet needs to be large enough to encompass the light of the Savior and His atonement—the turpentine of life.  Since I wasn’t born with the gift of artistry, I will need to pray for that special gift, as all spiritual gifts are attained by seeking them out.  I do have the gift of organization, however, so I won’t have to seek the gift of secretarial skills.  I will use the talents and skills given to me to file away all the tools provided in the beginning for the perfection of the canvas, as well as additional tools obtained as I move through life.  We do indeed acquire more tools as we resolve the issues and trials that come up in our lives.  Knowledge, patience, charity, kindness, forgiveness, and endurance are all tools we acquire as we go that will need to be filed away for future reference so we have easy access to them when we need them again.

We gain access to the best tools for our canvas when we look towards the light of Christ.  He is our Ultimate Supplier of all good tools.  There is no middle man, nor is there a tax to pay.  The only price He asks for our supplies is obedience.

Like the young sunflower, when we follow the Savior of the world, the Son of God, we flourish and become glorious despite the many terrible circumstances that surround us. He truly is our light and life. . . . As individuals, disciples of Christ, living in a hostile world that is literally in commotion, we can thrive and bloom if we are rooted in our love of the Savior and humbly follow His teachings (Quentin L. Cook, The Lord Is My Light, Apr. 2015 General Conference).

Yes, the light and life of our canvas is Jesus Christ.  If we follow the Ultimate Supplier, our life’s love canvas will be a masterpiece fit to present to our Heavenly Father at the end of our mortal existence.