The Portrait Before Anyone Sees It

For the maker who turns the easel to the wall whenever there is a knock at the door.

When the prophet came to anoint a king, the sons of the house were brought out in order, oldest first, and each of them looked the part more than the last. The one who was actually chosen was not in the room. He was outside with the sheep, and somebody had to be sent to fetch him.

What is easy to miss in that account is how ordinary the exclusion was. Nobody was being cruel. A father simply did not think to include a boy who was out doing the unglamorous work, because the unfinished and the unimpressive are not what a household presents when somebody important arrives.

Now look at your sitting room. There's an easel in the corner and it faces the wall, and it has faced the wall every time anybody has knocked for the last four years.

Finishing a portrait and then covering it is not caution and it is not craft, it is fear of somebody standing in front of it, answered here as fear. Scripture says God has already searched you and known you completely, and the Holy Spirit is not impatient with a man frightened of being watched mid-work.

Naming the Fear Correctly

Get the shape of it right, because the wrong name for a fear is most of what keeps it in place.

You are not afraid the portrait is bad. You know precisely where it stands and what it still needs, which is more than most people know about their own work, and the assessment would take you one sentence.

The fear is about being watched partway. A finished picture is an object and it can be handed over. An unfinished one is a running argument with yourself, visible on a board, and anybody looking at it is looking at the argument rather than the conclusion.

Your fear is about being seen mid-thought, not about being unable. The written Word says God knows your sitting down, your rising up, your thought while it is still far off, while the Holy Spirit works in the part of you that would rather not be watched thinking.

Say it that way and most of the usual advice falls off. Nobody needs to reassure you about your ability. That was never the missing piece.

What the Wall Is Buying

Turning the easel around does something real, and it deserves honesty rather than a scolding.

Facing the wall, nothing is half judged. The picture stays exactly as good as you know it will be, unaffected by any glance at its middle, and the visitor meets a man in a room rather than a man in the middle of an argument. That is a real peace and you have maintained it carefully.

Here's the other column. Four years of turning it round means nobody has ever told you the one thing you cannot see from inside the work. The eye is slightly low. The hand reads as a fist. Whatever it is, you will find it in six months on your own, and one friend would find it in nine seconds.

You are buying a quiet room with the help you most need. Scripture puts your standing in what God knows of you rather than in what a visitor concludes from a half done face, and the Holy Spirit brings correction through people as readily as through time.

Nothing here asks you to exhibit, sell, or become somebody who enjoys an audience. One person, one look, one afternoon.

There's something else worth saying about the middle of a piece of work, and it's the part nobody tells a maker. The middle isn't a failure state. It's what the work looks like while it's true, before you've smoothed the argument out of it, and a person who has made anything themselves recognizes that immediately. What you're afraid will look like incompetence reads to another maker as honesty.

You'd know this if the easel belonged to somebody else. Walk into a friend's room, see a half done face on a board, and you wouldn't think less of him for a second. You'd want to stand there.

What One Look Would Actually Cost

Count the risk plainly, because the fear has been charging for four years without ever showing its arithmetic.

If somebody stands in front of that easel for two minutes, here's the realistic spread. They say it's coming along and mean it kindly and say nothing useful. They see the thing you can't see and say it, which is the best outcome and the one you are most afraid of. They ask a question about the sitter that you hadn't considered, and it changes the picture.

Not one of those ends with a man walking out of your house having revised his view of your character. That is what the fear keeps implying, and it has never once been asked to justify it.

Being watched mid-work is not being judged as a person. The written Word says the One who searches you is acquainted with all your ways, and the Holy Spirit keeps your worth where God set it rather than where a visitor's face puts it.

Stories in these messages are illustrations unless marked as testimony.

Written by Amir This message is free. Nothing here is locked, nothing is for sale, and nothing is being asked of you.