Transfigured by Sandi Hicks, MTS graduate (2017), Program Manager & Day Camp Manager at Hampton Bible Camp in Hampton, NB
Sandi Hicks, a 2017 MTS graduate, wrote the following reflection on her time with us, using the painting above as an illustration. We hope it will be a blessing to you, as it was to us this Christmas season:
When I don’t have my nose in a book, I like to paint. And there comes a point every time I do where I’ll put down my brushes, step back from the canvas, squint my eyes a little, tilt my head and then confidently announce to whoever is in the room “I ruined it.” The picture on the canvas never quite looks like the picture in my head. I set out after all of my papers were finished to paint a sunflower, and after a couple of days of muddling around and making a mess, I gave up, and scraped as much paint off of the canvas as I could so that it would be smooth when I started again. The funny thing is, though, that once I scraped off all the layers that I had worked so hard to build, I liked it a lot better. As I reflect on my past two years, I think this painting is quite an apt analogy.
I set out at the beginning of my time at MDC to paint a metaphorical sunflower. I had an idea in my head of what my degree would look like, and of the direction my life would take. But, as is always the case, the picture didn’t turn out quite the way I saw it in my head. These past two years have been long and they’ve been short. They’ve been stressful and rewarding, exhausting and rejuvenating, discouraging and heartening. Many of my ideas and suppositions have been stripped away, refined, and replaced by new ones so that even as I gave parts of myself to be buried, Jesus raised up in me new life. like clay in the hands of the potter in Jeremiah, I have been torn down, built up, and reshaped as it seems good to the Potter to do. And I know that as he has been faithful to do this work in me, he will continue to do so. As I continue to follow him, as I continue to acknowledge that my best efforts aren’t good enough, he will continue to work in me, scraping away those aspects of my life and myself which keep me from him. He will take my mess and turn it into something beautiful, even when it doesn’t match the picture in my head.
All of us at MDC wish you a blessed 2018 as you
experience the faithfulness of our Lord and Saviour.
“Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.”
Hebrews 10:23 (NASB)