Sunset Sail
Commission SOLDThis was painted for one of my earliest collectors. She wanted a brilliant sunset painting with corals, oranges, turquoise, blues, reds and every other color you could imagine. Done with a palette knife and about 10 layers of paint, she has her sunset sail for her Florida home.
Terry corrected my sails before I started on this one. Being a sailor, he is very much in tune with the jibs, mainsails etc and is always quick to correct my drawings if I am off for my sailboat paintings.
20 x 30 x 2 inches Oil on Canvas
Adversity
I was not sure what I wanted to write about last night but after much prayer and the completion of this painting, I decide to write about adversity in our lives. When you sail you basically have to rely on the weather, the wind and your skills. There are not motors on our sailboats. I know last summer I shared the story of one terrific storm that blew up on us with thunder, lightening and wind that was against us as we tacked into our cove to tie up the boat. I was frightened; just like the disciples were frightened in the boat during the storm. I prayed and told Terry I wanted to see our grand-daughter again. We worked hard together to bring that boat in safely and knew our true safety was in God's hands as lightening crackled around us with our huge mast soaring into the dark clouds. We both were paddling until Terry stopped and began pulling sails down because the wind was blowing us back out into the middle of the lake.
What do you do in life when troubles come? It comes in many names: accidents, afflictions, bereavement, difficulties, disasters, failures, disappointments, hard times, misfortunes, suffering...I could keep typing but I know you get the point. It always seems to arrive unexpectedly. Adversity is defined as something acting against you. You read about it throughout the Bible. Sometimes it was sent from God directly to strengthen people, or sometimes it was sent by Satan. God even allows it from Satan for growth of our spirit and soul. We even face difficult challenges we bring to ourselves.
Just like change, adversity is something you can count on to happen. We all are confronted with painful situations. The hardest for me is when is affects our children and grandchildren. When it is us, the adult, we have experience and decisions that we have to make dealing with the negative situation. A child does not have the life experiences to put things into context. Often they do not fear as we fear because they are still so innocent.
When our eldest grandson fell ill and died from unexpected seizures and brain swelling, it came out of nowhere... or so we thought. He died. He just died. He had a mild case of the flu and he died. How do you deal with that? No warning...he died. We had just celebrated his 11th birthday two months earlier.
I have a dear friend whose youngest son has a rare kidney cancer. Rare enough that he is in the 10 percent that holds little hope for survival. They are 3/4's of the way through chemo treatments and their lives are upside down as they all struggle in the family to cope with this assault on the youngest member. Mom and dad cannot row hard enough to get the boat to the shore... they have to rest in the waves and wind and trust in God.
What are you experiencing right now that requires endurance and faith in our Lord? "God will not let you slip and fall..." Psalm 9:12.
Laurie
James 1:2-3 "Whenever trouble comes your way, let it be an opportunity for joy. For when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow."
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