Jesus And Crayons… Hello Hump Day! In this “atmospheric rain” floods out here in the West, the word ‘wet’ is everywhere! Our thirsty desert needs quenching but flooding is a different story. Since there isn’t much to do out in the rain, I decided to do some clean-up and rearrange my office. Not my favorite but it needed to be done. I was just about done when I saw a pack of Crayons. “Why, I asked myself, do I have Crayons?” I really couldn’t answer why they were there. Obviously they’d been there a long time if I couldn’t remember when I bought them! In the end, it gave me a “hearty laugh” amidst the damp day.

It also kept pricking my mind about a devotion that had something to do with Crayons, so I went digging in my files and found it. With permission from Max Lucado, here is your quick but powerful Hump Day devotions on Crayons!

“Tucked away in the cedar chest of my memory is a Sunday school teacher in a small West Texas church. She gave each of us a can of crayons and a sketch of Jesus torn from a coloring book. We didn’t illustrate pictures of ourselves, we colored the Son of God. We used what she gave us. No blue crayon for the sky? Well just make it purple. If Jesus’s hair is red, the teacher won’t mind. She taught us to paint Jesus with our own colors. I loved that teacher!”

I read this several times and I just couldn’t contain a huge smile. Couldn’t you just see a huge smile on Jesus’ face as his kids shared their creativity? I don’t always remember what I did as a young kid, but one stand-out was in pre-kindergarten where my sister and I went for the mornings. It was an Episcopal Church which welcomed all. A lady who worked with my mom invited her to enroll us so she did. It was fun—especially tumbling, I loved doing cartwheels. We also had Crayons and I loved to draw. However, I guess mountains cannot be colored purple. I asked the teacher why, but I cannot remember what she told me! I tried to not let that bother me because I thought it was a very good picture. At 4 years old, to me, I had a masterpiece!

Well, think about how God made you to do likewise. Each of us is unique and God wants us to use our uniqueness to illustrate Christ to others. Sadly, we often make a big thing out of our own images, lives, etc., when the world needs to see Jesus IN US instead.

After watching the Grammy’s the other night, one thing stood out that I really struggled with and that was outlandish clothing that barely covered anything; you might as well have strutted out completely naked! Talk about embellishing your own image? Yikes, what truly did it say to others? It was like they were applauding themselves and that reminded me that God promises no applause for self-promoters. Our society fits right into the self-promoter game. Many lives are living the back-lash of it. Here’s a new statistic about under-age teenagers embellishing their age to bet on sports; they are in debt beyond measure—that debt now in their parents’ hands. They are ‘coloring out of the edges’ into a devastating problem. Are their lives illustrating Christ?

Remember the story in Matthew 25:23 [MSG] where Jesus tells us: ‘a Master called his servants together, delegating ‘financial’ responsibilities. After a long time, the Master returned and gathered the 3 servants to see how his investments had been handled. Not everything went very well to the 3rd servant who buried the money—did nothing with it. For the other two, who were faithful in handling the money, generating larger investments for their Master, He said to them: “Good work! You did your job well. From now on be my partner.”  What illustration did their lives say about Christ?

In closing, I am looking at my box of Crayons, thinking I should open them and do some drawing of my own life. And as I do, my prayer is “Jesus, I want to shine for you! I want my life to be an illustration of You living in me.” That should be on the lips of all of us, because we are created in the image of God, and it is time we reflect Christ in us to a world who daily is slipping away from the goodness of our faithful Lord and Savior. AMEN.