A Most Extraordinary Piece of Art

An incredible artist, Ted Cantrell, sends my family a piece of his original artwork for our home. From the moment I remove this piece from its shipping box, I know I’m holding something extraordinary in my hands.

This Texan Artist once found an old tree that had grown up through a barbed wire fence on his grandfather’s farm. He examines the dying tree with barbs running through it, and he sees something that we don’t see. Taking discarded copper from a scrap metal yard, he shapes beautiful roses with barbed wire stems. He titles this piece, “Love Will Find a Way,” and describes how it’s about “beauty from ugliness” and “value from worthlessness.”

Love Will Find a Way

We can’t stop exploring this amazing creation. The Texan Artist knows that when a tree grows up against a barbed wire fence, it eventually incorporates it into itself.

I think about suffering–about all the painful barbs in life–and how we take it all in. It becomes part of us. We can’t escape it. But I think about how under the hand of a skilled artist, this reality turns into something exquisite. All the parts we deem worthless suddenly become so beautiful.

Roses from the Scrap Yard

We talk about symbols, and my children and I see a wooden cross, a crown of thorns, and the beauty of Christ in the roses.

I see the strength of a tree that won’t be stopped.

I see perseverance, joy, and beauty despite any obstacle. In fact, I see how the obstacle becomes our greatest meaning and our greatest raw material for beauty.

This is what God does. 

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 Are you amazed with how an Artist can make some discarded thing so beautiful?