When it comes to drawing, painting, and other visual arts, my abilities are singularly appalling. I draw stick figures. I paint "abstracts." Imagine my jubilation as a child when I discovered tracing. Whatever I wanted to create I could find in an already existing picture. I would throw back the curtains, press the image up against a window with my own paper over top, and voila! A beautiful copy! The lines my clumsy hands failed to execute on their own, flowed magically from my pen with a guide underneath. The spacing with which I always struggled became elegantly proportional as I followed the original. My copy was never quite as perfect (it was tiring pressing those papers up to the glass and tracing with careful patience!), but it looked better than anything I tried on my own.
1 Peter 2:21-24
"For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps, who committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in His mouth; and while being reviled, He did not revile in return; while suffering, He uttered no threats, but kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously; and He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed."
The word "example" in the Greek is literally "an original to be copied". Jesus Christ is the original. We lay our lives in line with His, and we trace. We copy His words, we copy His actions, we copy His attitude. Sometimes our picture does not look as perfect as His, but that never means we scrap the original and try life on our own. We seek forgiveness, we pick up our pen, and we start following Him again.
This is how we create the greatest masterpieces. We copy the Master. I love that simple image from my childhood. The light shines through the original and floods my copy. The light makes my beautiful life possible.
Where have you tried to create reality on your own, apart from our great Original? Has a demand for your rights, your way, your voice drawn your pen away from its tracing task? The Savior floods our lives with light. Can we open our eyes, pick up our pen, and copy the Master?
