The Painting and the Painter

        Many years ago, I read a story about a girl whose mother had died in childbirth. Her father raised her on his salary as an art teacher, and in any spare time he had, he painted. He was skilled but meticulous, and over the years he sold only five or six paintings. But he absolutely refused to sign them. Sadly, he was dying of tuberculosis and worried about providing for his daughter. When she was in her early teens, he passed away and she was left as a ward of the school.

        Meanwhile, his assistant began turning out new paintings in the style of his master, and signing them---there was to be no mistake as to who the artist was. One day, the painter's daughter, now about sixteen, was in the school gallery, staring at her father's work, when it dawned on her that there seemed to be some writing in the smoke from a cottage chimney. She looked closer and, to her amazement, she could just make out her father's name!

        She moved to another of his paintings and there was his name in the ripples of a stream. Then she found the work of the apprentice---and there, along with the apprentice's signature at the bottom, was her father's name hidden in the swirl of autumn leaves. Another had his name outlined in snowdrifts against a hedge---the paintings were all by her father and the apprentice was a cheat. Her father really had provided for her, but his assistant had stolen all his other paintings.

        When we study the Bible and compare Scripture with Scripture we start to read God's signature in the column of smoke or the ripples in the stream or the swirl of leaves. In other words, we see God's hand in the self-consistency He has built into the Bible about the doctrine of salvation, or the person of Christ, or the Trinity, or the character of the Church, or any number of other Scriptural subjects. Let's give God full credit for overseeing the writing and preservation of the Scriptures. Surely if we trust Him to save our souls, we can trust Him to leave us in no doubt about what He has written. Only the painter's name was embedded in the paintings; the touch of the apprentice was only superficial. No one, in a similar way, can hide or erase God's signature, embedded as it is in His own work.