Drawer menu
Three years ago, I completed a painting that would quietly change everything.
It was a commission - a gift from a husband to his wife - and I remember the weight of it even as I mixed the first colours. The subject was Jesus, but not in the way He is so often depicted. There would be no face. No full figure standing at a distance. Just His torso, His outstretched hand reaching toward the viewer in sharp, foreshortened realism, and the quiet authority of white and blue - heavenly colours - filling the space around Him.
I called it The Way, the Truth, and the Life.
When the husband's wife saw it for the first time, she wept. He wrote to me afterward: "This is not just a painting - it's something we will treasure forever." Those words undid me. Because I knew something he may not have fully realised in that moment: I needed that painting just as much as they did.
That painting became the first work I sold after arriving in Australia. But it was more than a sale - it was a marker. A beginning. A stone laid down in a season when I was still finding my footing, still daring to believe that what I carried inside me - this lifelong yearning to create with purpose - could become something real.
Looking back, I can see now what I could only feel then: a dream was being born.
What started as a commission became a cornerstone. A visual declaration of what my art was always meant to be - not just beautiful work, but ministry. A calling to glorify God through colour and form, to create spaces where faith and creativity breathe together.
The hand in that painting was always reaching toward more than a canvas.
There is a moment in Matthew 14 that I return to again and again.
The disciples are on the water at night. The wind is wild, the boat is straining, and then - through the dark - they see something moving toward them on the surface of the sea. They think it's a ghost. They cry out in fear.
And then they hear His voice: "Take courage. It is I. Don't be afraid."
Peter - impulsive, desperate, hopeful Peter - calls back: "Lord, if it's you, tell me to come to you on the water."
And Jesus says simply: "Come."
Every time I look at that painting - at that hand, outstretched, reaching through the canvas toward whoever is looking - I hear that word. Come. It is not a shout. It is not a demand. It is an invitation so simple, so direct, so filled with the weight of His presence, that it asks only one thing in return: trust.
Peter steps out of the boat. And for a moment, he walks.
I have been Peter more times than I can count.
Even now - twenty-five years after my conversion - I know what it is to step out, to feel that first impossible moment of walking toward Him, and then to hear the wind. To feel the waves. To have the noise of the world, the pressure of circumstances, the weight of fear rise up and drown out everything - even His voice, which was so clear just seconds before.
And I sink. Not dramatically. Not all at once. But inwardly - that quiet, heavy sinking that anyone who has wrestled with anxiety or discouragement will recognise. The storm rages. And He feels very far away.
But this is where the story turns.
Because Peter, sinking, does the only thing left to do: he cries out. "Lord, save me!"
And immediately - Matthew is careful to use that word - Jesus reaches out His hand and catches him.
Not after Peter has composed himself. Not once the storm has passed. Not when Peter has managed to muster enough faith to deserve rescuing.
Immediately. Mid-sink. Mid-panic. Mid-doubt.
He reaches out His hand.
What Jesus says next has always struck me - not for its sharpness, but for its tenderness.
"You of little faith, why did you doubt?"
I used to read those words as a mild rebuke. A holy sigh of disappointment. But the longer I walk with God, the more I hear something else in them entirely. He doesn't say it to shame Peter. He says it like a Father watching His child take their first steps, arms outstretched, marvelling that fear could compete with love this present and this close.
Why did you doubt? - as if to say: I was right here. I am always right here. Faith should feel like the most natural thing in the world to a child of God, because I am the most real thing in your world.
He says it to me too. I hear it after every wave, every sinking, every desperate reaching upward. Not in condemnation. In grace. In an invitation to learn, to grow, to know Him more.
And that, perhaps, is the whole point.
Twenty-five years of faith. And I am still learning to step out without looking at the wind.
There is something humbling and beautiful about that. I used to think maturity in faith meant no longer doubting. Now I think it means learning, over and over, to bring the doubt to Him rather than letting it pull you under alone. To cry out sooner. To trust the hand faster.
The painting I made three years ago captures something I'm still living into. That hand - so close, so real, so undeniably present - is not a distant gesture from a distant God. It is the posture of One who came all the way down into our storm, who stands on the very water that terrifies us, and simply says: Come.
He is not asking for perfection. He is not waiting for the weather to clear.
He is reaching.
And all of creation - and every painting I will ever make - is, in some small way, my answer.
"Immediately Jesus reached out His hand and caught him." — Matthew 14:31
The Way, the Truth, and the Life was the first painting I sold in Australia, and it remains one of the most personal works I have ever created. If this reflection stirred something in you, I'd love to hear from you. And if you feel called to serve the Lord through the arts - welcome. This space is for you too.
