they start on thursday afternoons at our table. heather comes with her inspiration and still life arrangements and well-worn brushes. they sit together and paint, talking their way through the layers of sky and making bodies on the beach and sunsets and flowers. she helps him find the places on the watercolor pages, talking him through what his vision can’t find on it’s own.

she gives her time and lets his paintings fill her heart, prouldy sharing photos of them with her family.

then i take their work to the printer, who still says, “i don’t know how many copies we made, just take them,” refusing to accept our dollars in exchange for prints. maybe he refuses because he knows what they’re doing in our life.

then they go to plum avenue, where a dear friend offers time to watch sales, package paintings, visit post offices and write notes to each sweet buyer. her plate is full but she wants our minds to be free from the process, and so she freely gives her time.

and then they arrive at the homes of people that we’ve never met, never known, and never will. they’ve seen our story online and have seen ian’s life from a distance and want to be part of his goal to walk by thirty because in it they see God.

for years, they’ve arrived in small brown envelopes to africa, germany, spain, and autralia, because people around the world see something about God in his work, and in his courage.

they show up in barcelona, when a man proposes to his girlfriend and on the restaurant table before he gives the ring, he gives one of them. a painting. he tells her that all he wants for them is to share the same love as the painter and his wifey.

and their deliveries mean that he has more days of therapy, more days of learning to walk again, more days with his personal trainer.

but God does not stop there. God never stops where we expect Him to.

God never lets it be about us. because it never has been about us.

it is so much bigger.

a video of his first independent steps, a 15 second video that is seen by more than twenty thousand people.

twenty thousand people.

it’s a video, it’s steps, that aren’t just steps. they’re living proof that God is real, and God is alive, and God has all of us captured in this story because He wants us to see Him.

He wants to give us faith. through the weakness of Ian’s thigh that is filled with metal and his hips that don’t work as they should and his back that so often hurts that God gives Himself to us.

because we hear this, when they watch the video:

“i had given up faith that you would walk by thirty. but this shows me that God is real.”

“look what the Lord has done”

“i’m crying. God is so very good”

“my heart is smiling and my hands are lifted up to praise our great God”

inside the weakness of his tired bones, God lets all of us move together inside the rhythm of His grand designs. he pulls us together, the community it takes to paint, to buy, to ship, to pay, to work, to share, to see Him more fully.

He builds us into each other, that our light may pierce the darkness.

“but you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into the marvelous light. once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” 1 peter 2:9-10

thank you, for being God’s people with us.

i&l