The Joy of Discipleship, a devotional thought

In an effort to stave off the growing ennui of the Covid-19 Pandemic, my wife, daughter and I have recently been experimenting with oil painting, using the paint-along videos of Bob Ross as our guide. Even if you don’t recognize the name Bob Ross, you may remember him as the iconic painter the puffy perm, whose public broadcasting program, The Joy of Painting taught hundreds of would-be landscape painters how to gill their canvases with “happy little trees” and “majestic mountains,” in the 80s.

All his shows are now available online, and so, after a bit of research into what art supplies get the best results, a quick online order from the local Michaels store, and a long, leisurely afternoon at the easel, we had recreated one of Bob Ross’s classic landscapes.

We had googled “best beginner Bob Ross paintings,” and this article (here) suggested his special episode, called “Grandeur of Summer,” as the place to start.

Here’s the original Bob Ross masterpiece:

And here’s what my wife, daughter, and I all came up with, following his step-by-step instructions. Not bad for a first time, I hope:

Here’s my wife’s:

Here’s my daughter’s:

And here’s mine:

And here’s why I’m sharing about our recent family date with Bob Ross, on a blog dedicated to reflections on “God, life, faith, love, words and spirituality,” of all things. It’s because our three different versions of “Grandeur of Summer” are now hanging in our dining room, and the other day while looking at them, side by side like that, it occurred to me that they provide us with a really powerful metaphor for Christian discipleship.

One of the mysterious paradoxes about following Jesus is that he calls us to conform ardently to his way of being in the world. We can’t call him Lord and not do what he says, and if we’re to follow him we must take up our crosses, like he did, and come after him. Following Christ requires earnest obedience to his Way. At the same time, of course, following Jesus means we are set free from all forms of legalism—we live under grace and not law—and under grace we discover that the Way of Jesus is “open” to infinite variety, a million individual applications, and endless contextual interpretations. We each stand before our own master, Paul says; and each will give his or her own account of how we applied the truths of Christ to our own individual story.

So which is it: strict obedience, or boundless grace?

And here’s where an afternoon following Bob Ross as he paints his way through the grandeur of summer comes in handy.

My wife, my daughter, and I were each following Bob Ross’s how-to video earnestly, faithfully, and seriously. We were each painting the exact same painting, in that sense: his theme, his color choice, his design. And yet, as another quick review of the finished paintings makes crystal clear, each one of us painted very different paintings. None of them are so different that you can’t tell they were each painted under the master, so to speak, but they each reflect our own unique choices, brush-strokes, and “happy little accidents” (to quote Mr. Ross).

Each painting is the same as the Bob Ross original, and each is, at the same time, entirely unique.

I wonder if, when we all stand before the Lord, to give our account of how we obeyed his command in our context, for our time, and our circumstances, if it will be like comparing a billion different Bob Ross paintings, all painted strictly following the instructions of the master.

To put it a bit less metaphorically: I expect that when the final account is given and Jesus pronounces his “well done good and faithful servant” to each one of us, we will each be commended for different things—some of them may even be so different that we might be tempted to wonder how they could both receive a commendation at the same time—and yet however different they are, we will all be commended for the same thing: faithfully following the True Master.