He Created the Heavens and the Earth

On a trip through New Mexico about four years ago, Michala and I decided to stop to hike the rim of a dormant volcano in the north-east corner of the state. The hike was not too strenuous due to the paved road that led to the rim, but the vistas we encountered deserved an all-day affair. We were greeted with views of four states: Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico.

We could see the Sangre de Cristos in the west and the Black Hills in the east. Beneath us were the remains of the lava rivers that had shaped the landscape many years prior. We were stunned. And then, with a hushed voice, Michala whispered in my ear, “He created the heavens and the earth.” Such simple words, words we’d heard countless times, words made tremendously fresh as we realized just how big and magnificent the earth really is.

Psalm 19 rightly states that “the heavens declare the glory of God.” Creation is singing His praise as it shouts to those who will listen, “Look at Him, He is beyond worthy or all our praise. He is Beauty.”

While God’s glory is found in civilization as well, many find the undisturbed wilderness particularly revelatory. This was true of the romantic artists of the 19th century, especially those of the famed Hudson River School in upstate New York. Thomas Cole wrote of nature as giving our soul “a sweet foretaste of heaven.” And his works certainly displayed this conviction. He made detailed, sprawling landscape paintings that sought to display God’s glory by manipulating light to illuminate certain aspects of his work or to paint a cross shining through the leaves. He created a series of allegorical paintings known as the “Voyage of Life” that visually told the story of life from birth to eternity.

Another famous Hudson River School artist was Fredric Edwin Church, my personal favorite. He painted massive landscapes (his most famous “The Heart of the Andes” was five feet by ten feet). He sought to not only display what was visible in nature but what was not so visible, the great depth of God’s glory just beneath the surface. Here’s a link to his entire collection of works. May you spend a few moments to meditate upon those same words Michala whispered on the volcano top, “God created the heavens and the earth.”

He is glorious!

A New Conversation

Here's a blog I contributed to The Neighborhood Cafe.  I will be authoring the Monday blog for this site and linking them here. Thanks for reading and I look forward to further conversations.
Creation Carries a Cost, Beauty a High Price

Good Gravy

I was listening to NPR on the way home from work yesterday.  They were sharing a piece about soul-food.  In one of the interviews, a young man told of how he asked his granddaddy for his gumbo recipe, to which his granddaddy responded, "boy, there ain't no recipe, now get in this kitchen and watch me make it."  I could not help but smile, what a beautiful picture of what soul-food is all about.  Food for the soul must be born in the soul, not on an index card.  We've all seen this phenomenon first hand, that even when we follow aunt Betty's recipe exactly, the results just aren't quite the same.  We come up with excuses, blaming the altitude or the insufficient seasoning on our cast-iron skillet, but the only real excuse, and really do believe this, is that it is missing the love.

When I go see my aunt Betty, she always makes me gravy and biscuits.  These are things of legends.  Every time either my brother or I are in Arkansas without the other, we will call each other up and rub it in that we had aunt Betty's biscuits and gravy.  I have been eating this meal my whole life and yet I struggle to make gravy at all, let alone such wonderful grub as aunt Betty's.  I've been watching her, trying to learn her secrets, but she always "eyeballs" the ingredients and evidently my eyeballs don't work as well as hers.  Aunt Betty usually fusses over the thickness or saltiness, but no matter what, that is always some good gravy.  It is made with love, as she stirs her wooden spoon, she gives herself to this act of creating because she loves me and you can literally taste it.

Perhaps it is this way with all our creative acts.  That if we try to recreate what another has done, no matter how good the original, the end result is simply left lacking.  This doesn't mean we don't learn from those before. No, we get in that kitchen and watch them work.  And we learn, if we are lucky, that the secret ingredient is not some exotic spice but a charitable heart, a passion to to make the world a better place, even if only one biscuit at a time.  I am a witness that a single act of creating soul-food can change a person.  Although my aunt Betty never misses an opportunity to tell me she loves me, I hear her the loudest at the dinner table.  I taste the truth of these words in her gravy and it oh so sweet.  I only pray that I will be so brave when I put my hands to work, that I will not seek to imitate, but to love; and that is how I would best honor Aunt Betty.  Not by trying to recreate her food, but by giving myself to something in such a way, that perhaps it just might change the world, that it just might be real soul-food.

Thoughts on Creativity in the Image of God.

"In your relationships with one another, have the same attitude of mind Christ Jesus had: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own   advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a human being, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father."

Philippians 2:5-11    

As some of you are aware my wife has started a new blog and vocation to use the gifts and talents God has given her to create (you can check out her blog here).  I have seen the joy that this new work has given her and it has inspired me.  There is something remarkably beautiful about seeing this woman create.  However, like anything of worth, it is often hard for her to do the very thing she loves.  And, if we're honest, we all have the same struggles.  Why is that?

Throughout the age of the church perhaps the biggest theological debate has been over the problem of evil.  This is a debate that still stirs us today and can be summed up in a simple question: "If God is good, then why do bad things happen?"  If God is all the things that make Him God (omnipresent, omniscient, all-powerful, all-knowing, Holy, Loving, etc.)  then why or how could His creation look so, well, ugly sometimes.  The ground was not even done cooling before Eve sunk her teeth into that Pandora's box of a fruit.  Couldn't' He have seen this? Couldn't He have prevented this? Why even bother in the first place?

I will not pretend to have the answers to these questions.  Men much wiser than I have grappled with them only to be left defeated.  Yet, I believe I know at least a piece of the puzzle.  God is daring.  Creation always has been and always will be risky.  To literally give of yourself to make something unique, to truly write something beautiful, takes sacrifice.  God gave us His image and in doing so, He knew what He was risking but I believe He knew it was worth it too.  He was willing to give what ever it took to finish His work.  He knew that man would have the capacity to be like Him and He was willing to share His glory, and yet almost before He could finish calling His work good, it no longer was.

Going back to my initial question of why we struggle to do the things we most love, it may be that deep down, in the God-image part of us, we know that it may cost us everything.  We know that their are things out there, that if we let them, we will love so much that we will die for them: peace, equality, food for the hungry, and so on.  And we just aren't sure that we are truly ready to sacrifice.  It is frightening indeed to face the end of ourselves and not know, I mean KNOW, how it will all pan out.  Praise God that He does not leave us alone there in the fear; He has shown us the way.

As I said, creation cost God.  But it would soon cost Him everything.  In the incarnation, God becoming flesh in the man of Jesus.  He lived amongst us for several reasons, but most of all, to restore the Father's prize.  I love how human Jesus is at times.  In the Garden before His betrayal, He felt most pointedly the sacrifice He would have to endure and for a moment wished it didn't have to be.  And on the cross, in agony, crying out to His Father, the same question many of us in the the dark night of our soul have been too afraid to ask, "Why have you forsaken me?"

In Jesus, God lost everything: His glory, and His life.  Yet in Jesus, we gained everything: His glory and His life!  That, my friends is truly beautiful indeed.  Beauty is not free, it may cost us everything, but it has always been and always will be worth it.

To Be (Creative) or Not to Be...

I had a friend who said that "creativity is hiding your sources." I was instantly scandalized by that comment and later thought as I heard him speak, "This sounds a lot like Rob Bell." Yet, I often think about what he said concerning creativity and wonder if he indeed was on to something. We use words like original or unique as synonymous with creativity. Yet a survey of recent pop culture shows less and less originality. No wonder that the writer of Ecclesiastes wrote literally thousands of years ago that "there is nothing new under the Sun." And yet there are those works and those people who instantly strike you as being creative. If there is nothing new under the Sun, if being creative is hiding one's sources, then what is it about these people that intrigues us so?

I think about the people how have, through their creative output, inspired me, moved me to something beyond the mundane of my everyday existence. These people showed me something truly beautiful and thus showed me something of God, people such as Langston Hughes, Frederic Edwin Church, Frederick Buechner, Stephen Watson, or Cliff Hutchison. They have each produced inspiration work; yet I believe each of these people would say that they created because they had been inspired by those before them. Yet, from those sources, they found their own voice, did not try to be anybody else but themselves, the only person they truly could be. And that is what is so fascinating about them, that they are unique because there never has been nor ever will be another Langston Hughes or Cliff Hutchison. I truly believe we are the products of those who have gone before us. We draw upon our sources and synthesize them through our own lives, thoughts, and emotions.

Perhaps we need to rethink what it means to be creative. Does being creative mean being original? I think not. While something can be 'new' for a certain group at a certain time, in the grand scheme of things it is not original, only God Himself is original; the sole creator of all things. Paul says in Colossians 1:16 "all things have been created through Him and for Him." This is why creativity is so important to us, it is a part of the Imago Dei, we bear the creator's image by creating. What is promising about this is that having God as our source means we have a limitless pool of inspiration, leaving room for uniqueness, at least as far as humanity is concerned.

Being creative does not mean doing something that has never been done before but to stir the imagination, to shock, to inspire, and to heal. Creativity is most assuredly not limited to the arts, but in imitation of God, subject to every area of our lives. The sin is not being unoriginal but being unimaginative, and unproductive.

So was my friend right about hiding one's sources? Well, maybe in method, but, I would argue, not in intention. All of our creative output must be born in a state of awareness concerning those who have gone before and ultimately seen as a gift from God to be like Him. This may all seem like ramblings, but I believe it is an important conversation. So, I put the ball in your court: What does it mean to be creative as Christians, as Christ-followers, as image-bearers?