Collages

I love making collages.  It’s the one thing that I do somewhat well that makes me feel like an artist.  And yes, I know I’m just cutting things out of magazines and gluing them down, but just let me have this one.

As much as I enjoy making collages, they take quite a bit of time, and I have to have some kind of motivating factor to get me from A to Z (or else I’ll just get lazy halfway).  But as I was cutting up my family’s old issues of Vogue and GQ, I started thinking about something.

When I decide to make a collage, half the time, I don’t know what I want it to look like.  So I just cut things out that look attractive.  Sometimes, I can finish a collage and not even use pieces that I collected.  I just hold on to them assuming I’ll use them later.  And this whole process kind of reminded me about living a life of faith.

God cuts out all these pieces for us.  Things happen.  Things don’t happen.  We learn something, we feel something, we meet someone.  They’re all pieces.  But we have no idea what the finished product is going to look like.  We just have faith that God is a better collage-maker than me.  And when He’s done, we can stand back and look at the collage, recognizing every piece, and realizing how beautifully everything fits together. 

I think the tough part in all of this is not giving up halfway through.  When I lose sight of why I decided to start a collage, or I can’t figure out what to do with all the pieces, I’m tempted to scrap everything or stop working.  We can’t do this with God; not if we want to experience anything worthwhile.  

And that, my virtual friends, is why collages are awesome.   And why you should stop giving me that face when I tell you I like making them.