Creating Something New

Hey friend, Father’s Day is coming up!  

And I’ve got a great story I’d like to tell you about my own father. Hi, I’m Joni Eareckson Tada, and although my dad went home to be with the Lord many years ago, there is one particular memory that I so treasure. It’s the time when Daddy went camping with my husband and me up in the Sierras. One afternoon I watched my father as he sat on the picnic bench, picking through some old driftwood he had collected that morning. He chose a twisted piece of old bristlecone pine, and with his whittling knife, Daddy started cleaning and carving away all the dead bark and dirt. Slowly, meticulously he worked, all the while wiping the area he had worked on with an oilcloth. In an hour or so, he had a beautiful piece of wood in his hand – no longer gray and dead, but smooth and shiny with a golden brown color. I asked Daddy what he planned to do with it. “Oh, I think it would make a nice base for a lamp,” he said. And then went back to his quiet work of carving and digging and creating something beautiful out of another old piece of dry wood.  

While my father was carving with his knife, I nudged my husband Ken, and he took a snapshot of Daddy at work. And later on when I saw that photo, I decided that wow, I’d love to draw this image! It took me a good three months, but I was so pleased with the pastel pencil rendering. Halfway through it, though, I realized that the picture of my father at work with his knife was, well, it was a picture of the way my heavenly Father works in our lives. We come to him dry and dirty, and he takes the knife of his Word and begins cutting away everything that’s dead and ugly. He anoints us with oil, all the while creating something in our lives that’s totally new, totally different than what we thought we could be. Old things have passed away, and we begin shining with the glow of our Savior.  

I thought about all these things as I worked at my art easel. But when I started to draw the tip of the knife where it touches the wood, I stopped. I decided that I could not finish the end of the knife. Because who can explain what happens at that point where something old miraculously is transformed into something new and different? As in our own lives, how can we explain that miracle of life-changing transformation that occurs when God applies the knife of his Word to our lives? It’s impossible, and so, I left that part of the pastel pencil drawing unfinished. There is no tip on the knife; actually, it looks like a glint as if the sun were catching the metal. But really, I did it to leave it unexplained. It’s one of those Holy Spirit mysteries, when our lives become new in Christ. And 2 Corinthians 5:17 puts it this way: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old has gone, the new has come!” And that’s what this drawing, which I call “My Father’s Creation,” is all about, and I have it hanging on my office wall. 

If you’d like to see this drawing, I did a little video of it, and in the video I kind of explain what I’ve just shared with you. And I’ve posted it on my radio webpage, so please when you got a minute, come on over to joniradio.org and just take a look at it. I think you’ll be surprised and blessed as together we celebrate that the old has gone and the new has come. And aren’t you glad that we are our Father’s creation!  

© Joni and Friends