Painted Pictures

This week for Journey of Faith Friday, Amber asked us to share a song that has touched our lives. Music has been so intricately wove into my life, for my whole life, that it's almost difficult to find just one. However, there is one that keeps popping up, over and over again in my life, it's "Painted Pictures of Egypt" by Sara Groves. I mentioned it in a previous Journey of Faith Friday, and shared the lyrics with you all, but I've found the music video now. The song focuses on how there are going to be difficult times in our lives, times of change, when we just want to go back to the comfort of what we knew before, but at the same time we know we have to move on because God's closed that road and put us on this new one for a purpose, no matter the challenges. Egpypt refers to how the Israelites, while wandering in the desert, pleaded with Moses and with God to be able to go back to Egypt. It's not that Egypt was a good place, in fact, it was a horrible place of bondage and slavery, but wandering in the desert they couldn't see what good would come of it and they wanted what they new to be their "normal" back.

This song first impacted me when I was a special needs camp counselor in college. That summer was so difficult, all I wanted was my "normal" back. However, God was changing, challenging me, and stretching me into a better person, no matter how hard it was.




God continues to put me in seasons of my life that aren't comfortable and I think back on days that I knew as "normal" and yearn for them. However, because of the things I've learned, there's no way that the new me that God is forming, a new, stronger person in His image, can go back to the old me. No matter how comfortable it may seem.


I don’t want to leave here
I don’t want to stay
It feels like pinching to me
Either way
And the places I long for the most
Are the places where I’ve been
They are calling out to me
Like a long lost friend

It’s not about losing faith
It’s not about trust
It’s all about comfortable
When you move so much
And the place I was wasn’t perfect
But I had found a way to live
And it wasn’t milk or honey
But then neither is this

I've been painting pictures of Egypt,
Leaving out what it lacks
The future feels so hard,
And I wanna go back!
But the places that used to fit me,
Cannot hold the things I've learned
Those roads were closed off to me
While my back was turned!

The past is so tangible
I know it by heart
Familiar things are never easy
To discard
I was dying for some freedom
But now I hesitate to go
I am caught between the Promise
And the things I know

I've been painting pictures of Egypt,
Leaving out what it lacks
The future feels so hard,
And I wanna go back!
But the places that used to fit me,
Cannot hold the things I've learned
Those roads were closed off to me
While my back was turned!


If it comes too quick
I may not appreciate it
Is that the reason behind all this time and sand?
And if it comes too quick
I may not recognize it
Is that the reason behind all this time and sand?