I was playing and working with my four year old granddaughter in a pre-school workbook we had. She was coloring and drawing, learning colors and hand dexterity, shape names, copying letters, associating things with seasons and I don’t know what else, but some of it seemed very tedious. I questioned its inclusion for a moment – I had become an accountant to learn that tedium is part of life, and the significance of enduring it – had I started in elementary school? Of course all children learn to color, filling in between the lines with color, albeit wax crayon the worst of all markers. Training in Art starts before language as it should because it relies on the spirit which is alive and free in a child. How many depictions by children have caught your eye causing you to marvel at the interpretation and simplicity? I’ve seen these and asked myself, “Why couldn’t I do that?” It’s not ability or skill which are missing, but the spirit and wonder captured in a child’s eyes and perspective. Never let go or give up on your artistic expression, you must let it out for it to survive and thrive. Scripture gives this imperative, “Do not quench the Spirit.” (1 Thessalonians 5:19) Do not let criticism, judgment, comparison, disappointment, or rationality quench God’s gift within you, make your offering to God, rather than to men or yourself.
Tedium could stop you, as it frequently does those who seek immediate gratification or refuse because they don’t like to do what successful people choose to do. I’m not saying we are all the same, particularly with respect to our artistic expression or the Spirit, in fact, we are each unique, but we all have similar aversions. The Lord’s Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes is our guide. (Matt. 5:3-12)
When Adam and Eve were kicked out of the Garden of Eden, God said, “…Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” (Genesis 3:17-19) We cannot avoid the tedium of weeding and tilling the soil or its equivalent in our modern world, it’s part of our destiny. If our good Creator assigned it, He had a good intention. Not mere hardship, but qualification for advancement among our peers. (2 Tim. 4:5; Prov. 14:23; Heb. 12:7)
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