Of paint…

Some people can paint.  Some cannot.

I grew up painting.  Walls, that is.  Although I enjoy picture painting, I am by no means the next Renoir. However,  when it comes to slapping paint on walls, I manage pretty well.

One of the first things we did in Brazil was help to construct a church.  The church we were attending had been renting a building, but had recently purchased some land and began building the church.  They were in the process of prepping the tiles for the roof when we arrived. 

Cement block walls rose to meet metal rafters and the tiles were about 4x6 feet and were made of cement as well.  The tiles were wavy with about five or six waves per sheet. 

My family and I were asked to help paint and showed up at the church ready to work. 

Now, one very important aspect of painting is the paint.  Good paint in the can means good paint on the walls, and bad paint in the can—I’m sure you’ve guessed—means bad paint on the walls.

One of the men from the church had prepped the paint.  Not being of a painting mind, he assumed the following. 

1.      If adding a little water to thin the paint was good…

2.      Adding a lot of water was better…

3.      Adding even more water would stretch the paint even further.

4.      One could paint the entire ceiling with a gallon of paint.

My family and I regarded the resultant paint with dismay.  The consistency of skim milk, there was no way on earth it was going to cover the tiles.  Or stay on the rollers long enough to get to the tiles, since it ran from the rollers like water through a colander. 

We grabbed rollers with the longest nap possible and dunked it into the paint before slopping it onto the tile using the nap to push it around and create some kind of coverage. 

The results were splotchy to say the least.  We did use up all the watery paint on several coats of paint none of which did much to cover. 

In the end, the church bought a few more buckets of paint and my dad rushed to assure the man from the church that he would thin it as much as needed.

Perhaps a lesson to be learned is, like that man from the church, we think that the Gospel could be improved with maybe a few other things added to it.  And if a few things added are good, maybe a few other things to make it more appealing to a sinner would be better. 

But the only thing that can truly and abidingly cover the multitude of our sins is the pure and unaltered Gospel.  Jesus’ blood and atonement is enough.  Don’t thin down the Gospel with anything else.

And to avoid frustration, don’t thin your paint with too much water. 

Of Travel…

I flew back from Wales last week.  The trip included an hour to the airport.  A seven or eight hour flight to Newark and then around a two hour flight home, followed by an hour long drive.

Some might consider that a long trip, but after living in Brazil, any trip that last less than a day is a short trip.

When we first moved to Brazil, we lived about an hour from the airport.  After the move to Northern Brazil we lived seven or eight hours from the airport. 

A typical trip home to the west coast included the following.

1.       Drive to the airport.  This may sound easy, but with the conditions of the roads, this could last up to eight hours, and incalculable stress.  At one time, the state of Para decided to redo their roads and began by scraping off the asphalt and smoothing the dirt roads.  This was a vast improvement over the pot-holed asphalt roads.  We had particular places where the bathrooms were more or less clean and we could eat lunch.  Usually a small fried pastry called a pastel.

2.       Once we got to Belem, where the airport was located, we found a place to stay the night.  At first it was hotels, but eventually, we ended up staying at a guest house at a Christian camp. 

3.       After a very early morning we flew SOUTH to Sao Paulo.  Yes, we were actually only a few hours flight from Miami, but our flights always went through Sao Paulo. 

4.       After a five or six hour flight we had an entire day to kill until the flight to Chicago left at ten at night.  Since we usually had a lot of luggage, airport strolls weren’t really an option.

5.       The flight to Chicago was around ten hours long.  If we were fortunate there might be a movie worth watching, or better yet some empty seats where we could lay down and try to sleep.

6.       Landing in Chicago we switched over to speaking English and waited for our afternoon flight to Oregon. 

7.       The five or six hour flight to Oregon seemed interminable.  Partially because we had already read the airline magazine cover to cover on the previous flights.

We arrived in Oregon jet-lagged and exhausted after about three days of traveling.

And that is why, for me, any trip that lasts less than a day seems like a walk in the park.