17 August

Dear Friends,

My father’s best landscape

When he retired from business, my father took up painting as a hobby. His first efforts at landscapes were disastrous. His skies were too blue, his grass was too green and his daffodils too yellow. But in time he learned to tone down his colours. 

His best painting was of a rugged County Down coastline. It hung for years in our manse in Dublin. When people enquired about it, we said, ‘It’s pretty good except for the clouds. Dad never could paint clouds.’ One day a friend who is a professional artist visited our house. He enquired about the painting and we replied, ‘It’s a pity about the clouds.’ His response surprised us. ‘No,’ he said, ‘The clouds are fine. I have seen clouds like that.’ Suddenly we became aware that an artist sees before he or she paints. Only by observing the truth about the world can an artist tell the truth in paint. What a lesson for people of faith.

Look hard at life before you judge. If we tell the truth about what we see, we will surely not be far distant from Christ who is the Truth.

Denis Campbell