Painting by the Number

Whenever God rejects a “wish dream” it is not out of His disdain for our wishes, but it is always that He has something better.  In rejecting my wish dreams, God did not hold back His blessing from the farm, its ministry, and its supporters.  He had a better plan.

Looking back now I can see that what happened over the years was God’s plan painted in pictures that we could only uncover as we lived under His leadership. His plan was like the old-fashioned paint-by-the number pictures I had done in my childhood.  The pictures came to life when I followed the numbers carefully, choosing the right colors to fill in the spaces until the image began to appear: a galloping horse, a cuddly puppy, or a lovely cabin by a stream.

Those early days were exciting as we began to uncover that particular piece of artwork God was directing.  We all had our paintbrushes out and we were doing a lot of dreaming and coloring.  Sometimes, when we used the wrong color, we had to step back and listen to the Artist again.  Whenever we in Wellspring ran into bumps, disappointments, disagreements through the years, the issues could always be traced back to our own personal dreams and visions of what that final art piece would look like.

We did have vision, excitement, and dreams!  We had no real idea of the big picture God was painting, but we were eager to see what He would do.  That first small rag-tag group anticipated God was going to produce something beautiful . . . and He was going to allow us to work with Him.  Not only Judd and I, but all of us in our newly formed group had visions and dreams, and as a community we had to learn to listen. Listen to what each other had to say, what gifts each brought, and what God was saying into all of this.  Voices arose, flags raised, and we certainly accomplished a lot.

L”Abri had been our model, but we were wise enough to know quite early in that first year that we would not look exactly like L’Abri.   As we looked at the gifts God had given each person in our group, we had a myriad of ideas that led to very interesting discussions.

One evening we gathered around the small living room.  The discussion was one that had become familiar, but this time Kathy recorded what we said that evening.   We represented a variety of potential, experience, and interests in this living room.  Jane, a student at Manhattan Christian College and the leader of the Youth for Christ at Riley County High School; Dennis, the area InterVarsity staff person here at Kansas State University and Emporia State University;  John and Ken, graduate students in the Geography Department; Kathy, our recorder that evening, a grad student in Family Studies; Thayne studied in Fine Arts; Lowell a grad student in architecture; Carol a grad student in Physics; Charles a physician at Kansas State’s Lafene Health Center; Judd teaching in the Family Studies department; and then there was Kay, whose wisdom always put a capstone on our discussions; and as always, our children and I.   Not present were two professors from the Family Studies area at the University, George and Ken.  George was a child psychologist and Ken had many years’ experience in family studies.

What should our focus be?  Where were we going to put our efforts?