December 3 2024 – “A Clean Canvas” – by Paul Smith

A Clean Canvas
Many of us have enjoyed watching Bob Ross take an empty canvas on his instructional TV Series, The Joy Of Painting, and with broad strokes of his brush create these beautiful scenes. I so badly wanted to be able to do what he could do.
We are getting into the Christmas season now that Thanksgiving is behind us. If there ever was a need to start out with a blank canvas about something we celebrate annually, I would say Christmas would be on the top of my list. There is so much about how we go about celebrating Christmas that I wish was not a part of it.
We have taken a very special event, the birth of Jesus, and overlaid it with unending commercialization. In the process the two have become so intertwined that it is hard to enter the Christmas season with a clean canvas.
It is so hard to undo what has already been done. In painting the artist cannot undo what has been painted with a pencil eraser. The best the artist can do is to correct his mistakes, by painting over them.
No matter what the canvas of Christmas you have before you or in your mind looks like, let’s start this Christmas season by painting a new scene over it.
The scene begins with evil slavery, Roman oppression and occupation, injustice, religion, and all the sins that grow out of all that. You see if there was no sin in the world, we would never have had the need to celebrate Christmas. Think on that!
“She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” Matthew 1:21 NIV