THE SILLY PAINTS—A STORY TO TEACH SUBMISSION TO
GOD’S WILL

There was once a great artist who suddenly found one day that the brushes with which he was working, and the paints he was applying to his canvas, were in rebellion against him. It was as if they all wanted to be independent; and indeed, the night before, the paint tubes and the brushes, the palette and the knife, and all his other tools, had formed a conspiracy against him. They had decided that they could plan their own matters much better without his help.

And so, when he wanted to put a bit of scarlet in one part of the picture, the brush darted off to another part. The colors he was laying on appeared in places where he did not wish them at all. The white would not combine with the blue when he tried to mix the paint for the sky, nor the blue with the yellow when he tried to make the green for grass. His knife scratched off the wrong portions when he tried to make erasures, and his pink got dirty.

He worked faithfully, thinking the trouble was all in himself, and wondering what was the matter, until at last he saw that his picture was spoiled. In despair and disgust he threw his canvas away, and threw his paints and his brushes after it, so that all that the foolish tools gained was their own ruin.

You may think, children, that this is a very strange story, and yet it shows very clearly what most of us are doing all the time. God is the great artist who ought to fashion all our lives. The paints and the tools he uses are our minutes and days and years, the powers he has given us, our money, our time, our clothes, our faces and tongues and hands, and everything we have, and everything we are.

If we let him have his way with us, he will make a beautiful picture out of our lives; but if we rebel and try to plan our own living, after the manner of the foolish paints and tools of which I have been telling, then all our life becomes nothing but an ugly daub.

And that, boys and girls, is what is meant by the topic we have today, for consecration is simply letting God do with us what he wishes. Can we not trust ourselves completely to his wise and loving hands?