There are times in life we can find great meaning in tasks we did not choose for ourselves.  Many times people think that if someone else assigns them a task, then it won’t be significant.

My wife is a gentle, kind soul.  However, she’s definitely a school administrator.  Every now and then, she will sit me down and say, “Honey, I want you to…”  I usually am able to decipher in advance what the task is going to be because I get preliminary warnings.  I had been preliminarily warned when Averette said, “Have you noticed, Chip, how many canvases you’ve started and not finished?  Did you realize the canvases of unfinished paintings have grown to a significant stack in the garage?”  Or “Honey, I think this painting would be very nice if only you would finish it.” 

About two months ago, she lowered the boom.  “Darling, I love that you paint these nice oil paintings.  Don’t start any more until you finish all those in the garage that you started previously and didn’t finish at the time.”  Often I would start a painting and not know how to finish it.  More than likely I would become bored with a particular painting and become enthusiastic about a new painting.  I found nothing appealing about the idea of finishing the large number of canvases I started, but left unfinished.  For the sake of peace, I decided I might attempt the assigned task. 

I have now completed, or nearly completed, five of those canvases.  There is the Brooklyn Bridge at night.  I have spent at least one hundred hours on that painting.  It is completely finished and does not appeal to me at all.  I never want to see the Brooklyn Bridge and I have no idea what to do with this much-painted painting.  I finished, however, a wave of the ocean that I really like; sunrise over a lake; a scene of the grasslands coming across the causeway into Pace using vivid color rather than subtle; and a very nice mountain landscape.   I told Averette how much I have enjoyed finishing four of the five paintings and I thanked her for her persistent direction.   

In actuality, some of the time God assigns tasks to us we would not choose for ourselves.  Paul spent the last two-thirds of his life going from community to community speaking the story of his faith.  In some communities, he was accepted and loved.  In others, he was treated shamefully and rejected.  God assigned Paul the important task of bringing Christianity to the Gentile Roman world.  I’m sure there were days he became tired of God’s constant bidding.  He said, in Acts 14.22, “We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God.”  These were words Paul certainly lived out.  His life became valuable to him only as he could share the faith.  Acts 20:24 says, “However, I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus Christ has given me - the task of testifying to the gospel of God’s grace.”

The task of our testifying to the gospel of God’s grace is an assigned task for us as well.  Some canvases are appealing to us and others are not.  Yet, God’s grace is the true color of our lives - an assigned task worth doing.

Prayer:  Dear God, thank you for the task of sharing our faith.  Amen.