Oil painting

I started oil painting two days ago! It is really fun, I still like watercolor better, but maybe only because I know how to use it more.

I would love to display some of my art on my blog, but I don't know how!

Anyway, right now I'm working on a painting of my siblings and me in a canoe on the lake where our family own a lake house. Its going to be kind of impressionistic. The main focus is the water behind the canoe and the many shades of green and the ripples that create shapes. I hope it turns out!

The hard part is going to be us kids. I'm not trying to paint us so you can tell who it is, but I want people to be able to tell that they are children....drawing people is okay, but painting people, especially in oil is hard.....

well, lets see how it turns out!

The Purpose of life

THE PURPOSE OF LIFE, is it to love? Is it to fulfill your dreams? Is it to have a successful career or a family?

What is the purpose of life? Why do I live, what do I live for?

I am very much a person that needs a purpose, a reason for breathing and going on, day after day. Sometimes, my reason, my drive to live, has been to paint and fulfill my dream of being an artist. Sometimes I've felt that my purpose in life is to someday be a wife and mother.

All of these things are dreams I yearn for. Yet, in the end, they are meaningless.

What good is fame, when I am going to die and leave it behind anyway? What good is living for love when human love is such a fickle thing. What good is living when we are all just going to die and "wither away, like the flowers of the field"?

What good is life?

I have found, in my short sixteen years of living, that there is only one answer to the dilemma above: JESUS.

With Him there is a purpose to life! With him there is joy, with him is color and hope and life.

It is so true.

Just now I was working on my newest painting, and while I was working, a sort of despondency came over me: Why did I even bother with it!? Why paint a picture and put so much thought and worry in it, when I will die someday and it will fade away and be forgotten?

Perhaps this is a little dramatic, but the thought is a valid one. Why bother doing something when it will just be forgotten or thrown away anyway?

Then my eyes fell on the bible laying on my bed, and I knew the answer: Jesus.

The bible says that we are made to glorify God.

That is the one and only answer to all my questions above. We live, we breathe, we work and sweat to glorify God. That is why I should keep on painting, not do glorify myself, or gain fame and renown, no. But to glorify God, to worship Him in my own way.

We toil away on earth, struggle with sin and temptations, yet one day it will all be worth it! Because one day we will see Jesus face to face, and when we gaze into His face, all our worry, all our grief and trouble will fall away and we will truly be at peace. For eternity.