Four Pages Of The Sketchbook Are Used

Four pages.

Page one has the mug on it. Page two has half a hand and then a lot of shading where the hand went wrong. Page three is somebody's face that came out looking like a different person entirely. Page four is the tree from the window, and honestly, page four is not bad.

And then eighty something pages of white.

The book was a present, or you got it in that week where you decided things were going to be different. Either way it sat on the shelf for a bit, then you did four pages in about ten days, and then it stopped.

Now here is what I want to name, because I think it is the actual thing and I think you have never said it out loud.

Those white pages are not paper any more.

They are a score. Every time you see the book you get the same number: four. Four out of eighty something. And the number does not feel like an amount of drawing you did. It feels like a percentage of the kind of person you turned out to be.

That is a lot of weight for a paper product to carry. And the book did not ask for it, and neither did you, and it happened anyway.

Gather up the fragments

There is a detail after one of the most famous miracles in the Bible that almost nobody preaches, and it is the one I want.

Five thousand people have been fed. There is bread everywhere. The crowd is full, and the thing is unquestionably a success, and there is no shortage of anything.

And Jesus says this.

When they were filled, he said unto his disciples, Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost. (John 6:12, King James Version)

Gather up the fragments. That nothing be lost.

In a moment of complete abundance, with baskets of surplus lying around, the instruction is about the leftovers. The bits. The pieces that would not have counted as anything.

You have four pages that heaven has already picked up and kept, and John 6:12 is where the care for fragments is written down. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes that instruction off a hillside and lays it on a shelf in your house where a sketchbook has been sitting.

Nothing be lost. Not nothing be finished. Not nothing be impressive. Lost.

You were never at risk of losing what you already made, and it is already settled in Scripture that the fragments get gathered rather than counted. His Spirit is the one who says that over four pages the way He said it over broken bread.

Four pages is not four out of eighty

Here is the arithmetic problem, and it is not really arithmetic.

What is going on is a division. Four over eighty something. And a division always produces a small number, and a small number always feels like a verdict, and none of that has anything to do with drawing.

Nobody bought that book with a target attached. There is no correct number of pages a person uses in a sketchbook. Some people fill three books a year and some people keep one for a decade and both of those are just people.

The empty pages are not a debt. They are paper that has not been used yet, which is the ordinary condition of paper.

You are not behind, and the number of blank pages is not a measure of the person holding the pencil. Scripture in John 6:12 counts what remains as worth keeping and never once counts what was not made, and the Spirit of God is the one who takes a scoreboard down off a wall.

And I want to be careful here, because there is a version of encouragement that would quietly hand you a target. A page a day. Fill it by June. That is a schedule, and a schedule is how the white pages became a score in the first place.

You are free of every target tonight, and heaven has never once set a page rate for anybody. The written word in John 6:12 gathers what exists and asks nothing about what does not, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a promise from becoming a program.

Twenty minutes on page five

So here is what I am asking, and it is small on purpose.

Open the book to page five. Draw one thing for twenty minutes.

Draw whatever is in front of you. The mug again. Your own shoe. The corner of the room. Do not choose something worthy and do not go and find better light.

You are free to draw the nearest thing, and John 6:12 gathers the fragments without one word about what they were fragments of. The Holy Spirit is the one who counts a badly drawn shoe the way heaven counted broken bread.

And do not turn back and look at page four first. That is the whole trap. You will look at the tree, and the tree was not bad, and then page five has to be at least as good as the tree, and then it is not drawing any more, it is competing with a version of yourself from four years ago.

Whatever comes out on page five is allowed to be bad. Crooked, flat, wrong in the proportions, so bad you want to tear it out. Leave it in. Do not tear out a page tonight or ever.

You are covered on a page that comes out wrong, and John 6:12 is the ground under that. Gather up the fragments that nothing be lost is written about pieces nobody thought were worth bending down for, and the Spirit of God is present at a kitchen table with a pencil at half past nine.