Growing in Faith
One of the things I have noticed in the process of writing icons by way of egg tempera is that continually throughout the process there are moments when I look down at what I have completed and say to myself, “That looks great already. Maybe I should just stop here.” Who wouldn’t be tempted to think this? It is easier to stop when something already looks good, plus this removes the risk of messing things up in the later part of the process. But to do so would be to short change it. It never ceases to amaze me to see an image that looks good already transformed into something even more beautiful when more work is put into it. Yes, there are risks of making mistakes in each step of the process, but mistakes can be corrected. Mistakes also keep us humble.
This same process can be applied to the Christian life. I am fairly certain that a common temptation is to simply live our Christian faith in a “good enough” fashion rather than risk sainthood. Makes sense to me. If things aren’t broken, if my efforts at living a Christian life are going fairly well, why mess with it? Trying to attain even greater heights in the Christian life puts one at risk for a greater fall. But to avoid the risk is to avoid the call that God places before all of us, that being the perpetual call to greater holiness. The tough thing about embracing this call is the certainty that when we do, our temptations to sin will grow exponentially. That’s a fact. Like the writing of an icon, however, corrections can always be made. God’s mercy is endless. We learn about the areas we need to grow by risking failure, and even expecting to fail with the knowledge that when we do the only real failure is in not getting up again.
The last step of writing an icon is to paint a white line around the halo that matches the color of the white gessoed board one starts with at the beginning of the process. My teacher Irene said something that has been echoing in my mind since Saturday about the white line. “If you reach the end of writing the icon and you are still not holy,” she said, “this final white line invites you to go back to the beginning and try again.”
I’ll be starting with a new white board today.
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