For Wilshire Baptist Church
My work introduces me to interesting people, and last week it was Tom Hoitsma, a Dallas-based abstract expressionist artist. He’s a tall man at 6 feet 4 inches whose finished works are even bigger at up to eight feet by six feet – a size that involves not just his creative mind but his entire being.
“It’s very big, physical work. When I’m done painting, I am soaked (with paint) from head to toe,” he says. What’s more, the bending, kneeling and stretching to put paint on canvas often aggravates an old tennis injury. “After I paint it’s like I’ve played tennis on my knee. It swells up the next day and I limp around.”
I wish I could say I was so passionate about something that I’m willing to get soaked from head to toe, but I don’t think I can. I take a measured approach to everything I do to avoid mess and pain. I’m a poor cook because I try to keep the kitchen clean as I go. I’m pretty good in the yard and garden, but I’ll crouch in the beds or kneel on the grass around the edges while LeAnn will sit in the dirt and really dig into it.
I will stare at a project for a good long time while I try to figure out the neatest way to accomplish it. Right now that ranges from redoing the stone patio I put down a few years ago to re-engaging out-of-touch friends. I’ve let the weeds grow tall around the stones and the friendships while thinking about where to start.
God knows how messy our lives can be – so much so that he sent his son to show us a way through it. Not an easy way, and not a neat way, but a way just the same. He not only taught and preached and showed us the best way to live, but he got down into the mud and the blood of life and death.
God doesn’t ask nearly as much of us; God asks only that we love him and love each other. That can get awfully messy, but some among us are not afraid. We call them saints, officially and otherwise. They’re the ones who are not bothered by the messiness of relationships. They don’t mind being soaked from head to toe with the sweat and sorrow of helping others.
Tom Hoitsma says he doesn’t wait for inspiration to paint. “I work every day whether I’m inspired or not. It’s mostly about just doing the work.” It’s the same with living and loving. We just have to wade in and not mind getting soaked from head to toe.