The Impressionist by Tim Clinton, Max Davis Read Free Book Online Page A

She’d place her hands on my cheeks and pull my face down to hers and say, ‘Now you listen to me, James Edward Porter, you are created in God’s image. You hear me?’ I guess after a while, I started to believe that too.
    “Let me show you something.” With his palette still in one hand and his brush in the other, Jim Ed walked over to me. “Here, hold out your arm.”
    I stretched out my arm toward him as he began to dip the brush in the paint. He gently brushed a stroke of yellow on my arm, then red, then blue, then green.
    “What do those colors make up?” he asked.
    “A rainbow?” I guessed.
    “Yep, a rainbow.”
    After that, he repeated the process on my other arm. This time however, he painted each stroke directly on top of each other.
    “Now what color you have?”
    “Black.”
    “That’s right,” he said grinning large and wide. “Black is all the colors of the rainbow put together.”
    “That’s pretty neat, Jim Ed,” I said. We’d only been talking for a short while and somehow this stranger had already touched me in an overwhelming way. “Christina showed me that one day. Taught me how to receive love and respect myself for who I was, to see myself as God sees me. I had to get new eyes, Adam, like you. When we begin to see ourselves the way God sees us, something miraculous begins to happen. We start seeing others the way God sees them and loving them the way God loves us. When that happens, people start seeing us differently. ”
    I nodded, indicating I was following him.
    “You want Paige to see you differently? Then start seeing yourself as God sees you and seeing her how God sees her. It’s an unending circle.”
    “Sounds too simple,” I said, giving him my skeptical look. I wanted desperately to believe what he was saying, but because I’d been so beat down with the Bible and religion all my life, I was a bit leery. I’d heard the “God loves me” spiel, but deep down I’d also felt He was angry at me and most certainly didn’t like me, especially given the fact that I’d failed Him so much. On top of that, I could be a real jerk, like Paige had so poignantly pointed out.
    “Is simple,” said Jim Ed. He could see that I was struggling. “So simple, people miss it. But it’s not simplistic. There is a difference you know. Many profound things are simple, can be understood by a child but still baffle a scholar. Man’s pride gets in the way. Want things to be complicated, but you’re right. It is simple.”
    He got quiet, shifted his gaze from me back to the portrait. I could see the faint gleam of sweat on his shiny forehead as he worked. The crisp morning was turning into a quite warm day. My stomach growled and I closed my eyes.
    “And sing,” Jim Ed suddenly spoke making my eyes pop right back open. “My Christina could sing like an angel. Her favorite song was ‘Amazing Grace.’ I can hear her singing it right now in front of the church, the whole congregation swaying like a wheat field in the wind. ‘Amazzzzing grace, how sweet the sound…that saved a
wretch
like meeeee!’ She’d be singing and then stop right in the middle and start preaching. She’d say, ‘If you took the word
wretch
out of this song, it’d change the whole meaning.’ Think about that, Adam.”
    I didn’t respond with words, just let my head drop and clasped my hands together in my lap thinking about what he’d just said.
    “Her daddy was the preacher at Mount Zion Church, but Christina, she wasn’t just a churchgoer, that girl knew God. There’s a big difference. A lot of church folk out there. Few people have a direct line to the Throne like her. She used to tell me that I was priceless because God created me and loved me so much that He died for me, took every bit of my sin on that Cross. He paid the price completely. She’d say, ‘Why you so mad Jim Ed? God’s not mad at you. All His anger was taken out on Jesus. Thank God for the blood! Now you receive His gift! Don’t be