(THOMAS KINKADE DIED APRIL 6, 2012)
Thomas Kinkade first came to my attention in the early 1990’s when I worked for a Christian organization called, “Focus on the Family” at their Canadian offices in Vancouver, Canada.
I was immediately drawn into his use of light in his paintings and was not surprized that he became known as “The Painter of Light”. His actual paintings were a little too expensive for what I could afford, but I got a calendar for Christmas that year which featured his paintings. So as each month passed, I would tape the picture from the previous month to my bedroom walls until I had 12 copies of his paintings hanging all over the place. At the end of the year I was hoping I would get his next calendar for the following year.
As the years passed it seemed like Thomas Kinkade was EVERYWHERE! As well as his paintings adorning everything from tote-bags to coasters, he had written a myriad of books and seemed to be selling, selling, selling everything that had even the merest connection to him. I read his entire “Cape Light” series of books and watched his “products” grow and spread throughout the world.
I read one of his books that I still have to this day and have read and re-read it several times. It is called, “Lightposts for Living: The Art of Choosing a Joyful Life”. (1999) It was titled perfectly because it gave practical advice on how to bring joy into your daily and sometimes hum-drum life. He proposed that “joy” was not something that simply fell out of the sky into your lap, but you had to work at in order to have it part of your life. As I read the circumstances surrounding his death and the last years of his life, it seemed that he had stopped taking his own advice about joy somewhere along the line.
No doubt you will hear in the next months all the bad things that were going on in Kinkade’s life. He claimed to be a Christian which means he had a bulls-eye on his back to be aimed at by every person who has an axe to grind with Jesus. His passing will only enhance that desire in some people. Especially because he will not be here to defend himself.
Perhaps Thomas lost sight of what God wanted him to do with his talent …
Perhaps he became caught up in the money …
Perhaps it was too important to him that he become famous …
Perhaps he lost sight of how important his family is …
Perhaps he let his relationship with his wife slide until it was too difficult for him to repair …
Perhaps he wished to follow his own path more than the path that God had marked out for him …
All that may be true but I do know this: when Jesus died on the cross he paid the price for every one of Thomas Kinkade’s sins (as well as all of mine and yours too). In all the years I knew of Thomas Kinkade, I never once heard him deny that he was a Christian or that he loved Jesus. His soul was a sell-out for Jesus, regardless of the sins he committed along the way. And if he accepted Jesus, then I know Jesus accepted him!
Simply put, Thomas Kinkade is in heaven with Jesus and all the problems he had here mean nothing to him now. He is seeing God in the “splendour of his majesty” and many other things that he could probably never accurately paint, even if he had been the greatest artist to ever walk this planet.
But I wonder that, even with all the critics he had throughout his career, he still sold huge amounts of his paintings. I don’t believe all of that was just because he was clever with his use of light. He had a way of freezing a moment in time that had passed or maybe had never existed except in his mind. But in that frozen moment we found something we were drawn to. Something that we rarely or cannot find anymore. The beauty found in quietness and simple things. Each of his paintings or books had a gentleness to them. They depicted a time or place when people cared for one another and most people knew that God was watching out for them. And because of their faith in God, they had reserves of strength beyond humanity and encounters with compassion that is missing in our daily lives now-a-days.
So I thank God for the works of Thomas Kinkade which remind me WHO made me, WHY I am here, and WHAT I have to look forward to. And to Thomas Kinkade for making me pause and remember that, the way God was in the “olden days” is the way he is right now. Today.
And I won’t forget to say a prayer for his family that has been temporarily left behind and remember that the “painter of light” is now standing beside the “Creator of Light”.
“ And God said, ‘Let there be light.’ and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness.”
(GENESIS 1:3)
“ In him was life and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.”
“ He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe.”
(JOHN 1: 4-5, 7)
“ When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, ‘ I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.’ “ (JOHN 8:12)
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