Wearing an artist’s smock and tam and holding a palette and paintbrush, Noel Mills fills the canvas with bold, colorful strokes of paint.
But she doesn’t work in an artist’s dusty loft or even a modern, well-lit studio. For the past five years, the 42-year-old wife and mother of twin teenage boys has used her artistic talent in church to present the gospel in a unique way.
As a member of Valley View Baptist Church, Tuscaloosa, in Tuscaloosa Baptist Association, Mills occasionally painted murals for choir performances and children’s programs, but she said God used a difficult experience to give her a vision for using her artwork as a ministry.
“When my husband, David, was called to active duty in the United States Air Force and sent to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, that’s about the time that I saw how the Lord brought us through so many things, and the desire just burned inside of me to do something more for Him,” Mills said. “I started praying, ‘Lord, please use me for your Kingdom’s glory.’”
When her husband was home between deployments, he told her about a song he heard that had impressed him, “A Picture of Grace” by the Gaither Vocal Band.
“I had been talking about trying to do a painting or chalk drawing to a song, and David thought this was the perfect one,” she said.
During the following months, Mills listened to the recording hundreds of time and worked to develop a chalk drawing.
“My dining room was covered in pictures of Jesus,” she recalled.
Mills introduced “A Picture of Grace” at Valley View Baptist in February 2004, and it is now her most requested performance. As the music plays, she makes bold, slashing chalk strokes. Although the design is interesting, there seems to be no form or picture. When the drawing is finished, Mills’ audience is temporarily perplexed.
Then as the last notes of the song play, she lifts the drawing and turns it upside down to reveal a beautiful image of Christ wearing a crown of thorns.
“People ask me why I do the picture upside down. I tell them I think about our lives and how sometimes when we’re going through difficult times, we don’t see Christ clearly. We don’t see who He is,” Mills said.
“But when we get to the point where we fall down on our face and cry out to Him, our image of Him starts to turn around and become clear to us. That’s when His grace is revealed to us.”
She now has a collection of pictures performed to songs using various backdrops and types of paint in addition to her chalk drawings. Mills has performed in numerous churches in Alabama. “It’s such an honor for me to be able to share the gospel and help people to see Jesus in a new way instead of reading about Him or hearing about Him as they’ve always done,” she said.
Knowing lives have been changed and hearts touched is what inspires her to continue.
“I don’t want people to look at a picture that I do and say, ‘Wow that’s pretty,’” Mills said. “I want them to see Jesus and to be changed.”
For more information, call Mills at 205-371-9109.
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