I've always wondered about what it meant to use our artistic gifts to glorify our Father. A lot of people think that this action is restricted to a certain portion of the church's population: those who can sing or play an instrument in the worship band. Not true, if we all remember that worship comes in all sorts of different shapes and sizes, due to what the core of worship is: acknowledging and understanding how God the creator and rescuer is worthy to be praised. Still, something about music, if my heart is in the right place, helps me envelop myself in worshiping him, giving him all of me.
So what is about the art of music that translates well into worship, then? What is art in the context of Jesus?
NT says:
The arts are not the pretty but irrelevant bits around the border of reality. They are highways into the center of a reality which cannot be glimpsed, let alone grasped, any other way. The present world is good, but broken and in any case incomplete; art of all kinds enables us to understand that paradox in its many dimensions.
Sounds like art is God creating places, through our creativity, where Jesus pierces through the veil and we see the reality of the coming kingdom.
A pastor once said to me that God did not give us all different talents and expect only some to make an art out of it: he enables us to all be artists. I guess this is what he was talking about: God enables us all to live in and share the good news in a beautiful, beautiful way, in a symphony of his power and grace. Where the beauty of the Truth shines through, there is a work of art.
Ephesians 2:10 "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them."
So compose your pieces, paint your landscapes, write your essays, design those clothes, and sing, sing, sing those songs, remembering what the core of artistic talent is:
We’re not here to decorate the Truth, we’re here to proclaim it.
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