I added a song to my worship playlist recently, and I’m loving it! “Fingerprints” by Abi Bennett.

You gave Your life; now I am fully alive. You spoke Your truth and tore down all my walls. My life has the fingerprints of Christ. Be magnified through me.

The lyrics to this song inspired me to sit down and paint, and I discovered something that really brought out my “inner child”—I love finger painting!

As I began moving my fingers around the paper, I realized how relaxing this whole process was. Painting with my fingers actually gave me a great deal of control, much more control than I have had with paint brushes. Instead of my hands telling the brushes what to do, I was able to cut out the middle man and put my hands directly to the paper. I felt so connected to my artwork!

In a way, I guess you could say we are a lot like a painting. It’s harder for God to really move in our lives if we only allow Him to reach us from a distance instead of with His very own hands. I thought back to all the YouTube videos, books, and sermons I had devoted so many hours to. While these sources are good sources, they are not primary sources. They aren’t God’s Word. Secondary sources of God’s truth should come secondary to the Word of God Himself, right? We all need to cut out the middle man sometimes—more often than not, actually. We should all be praying, that is, speaking directly to God Himself, and studying God’s Word more than we are seeking out wisdom from man—much, much more.

There came a point while creating this painting where I entered what is known as the flow state. The flow state is the mental state in which a person is completely focused on a task or activity. In this state, they are directing all of their attention toward the task, and they do not experience many thoughts about themself or their performance. As a self-proclaimed perfectionist, it’s not easy for me to arrive at this illusive state, but that day I did. Ironically, it’s those times we are thinking the least about ourselves that we learn the most about who we are.

I began to think about how this painting would be uniquely mine; no one else could recreate this—it had my own fingerprints. We as followers of Christ have something unique about us as well; we have God’s very own unique touch, His fingerprint! As I stepped back to admire my little creation, I began to wonder if this is how God feels when He looks at His creation; maybe, just maybe, this is how the Creator of the universe feels when He looks at me.