Art

There is a power to inspiration, there is power to ideas and there is a power to the ability to move forward. To conquer the unknown is to take courage, to behold an unknown future, and to go, regardless of a downfall. Moving forward takes the control of the unknown and with that, creating and transforming the world around you is a powerful and needed act. Art is only alive when people are forming and creating - of and in this world and they provide windows of life to transport and transform you into dimensions and emotions that are present and new, fresh and essential. Art is a necessity of hope, of a celebration, and of the good and true. The need for art indicates and answers the question of More, more of what is present, more than right now, there is more than what you see here. It begins the renewal of the earth, right now. It shows and tells you that there is a world to come, and the art of this earth that celebrates the beauty all around us. That makes you step into a new world and tap into pure and lovely emotion. Putting your passion into something tangible, or something that is released for the world to share and discover. We all have a mind and we all can be inspired. We can all share a story. Art is a contribution to the story of the world, yet art is also an announcement that hope is alive. Art reveals that there is still more of this world to be discovered, the world is still a place of wonder, a place of excitement a place of joy and most of all, this earth is a place of beauty. This earth still has the capabilities of inspiration. Because after all, God was, is, and always will be, an artist.
It’s the experience. When we sit back and say, “Wow. This is our God.” We search, seek, and find God in a sense of beauty. We meet God in a place that is awe-inspiring and full of splendor. We find God in beauty more than the generations ago would find and share God in a sense of reasoning. So even living in a culture driven by inspiration we must seek God’s glory. Connecting with suffering revealed in art and getting a drift of the emotions God feels. It’s a connection. It’s a strong, incomprehendible love that still meets us when there’s a mess, and when nothing is beautiful- that’s God’s art. The cross is a display of the passion and fervor of the connection God is making with us. That he aches as we do. He’s still with us, and He’s going to love us. Unconditionally. Holy. Majestically. Beautifully. And the tangible things we enjoy about and around us are still displaying that same message. The music and the wind and the colors and the pictures and the emotion are human to human creating the same connection between God and us, unveiling the message that we aren’t the only ones who feel that way. We aren’t alone in any sort of despair. We have another that can say, “me too.” Yet, the power to overcome and rejoice is so much more powerful, together. Because the new is here. The resurrection is only a couple days forward, you’ve just got to keep moving. You’ve just got to get there. And the art of all this is beauty in itself.
This is the power of Art-
When people create impractical moments of joy and beauty.
What’s point of that art?
There is no point. That’s the point. It’s beautiful and vital, refreshing. It’s the kinds of thing that reminds us that certain things will extend into the world to come.
-Rob Bell
Because when something is beautiful, it’s beautiful. And it will stay beautiful.
No famine, darkness, violence, greed, slander, or wrong-doing will ever take that away from something that is unique and full of splendor and happiness. Those things will not last, for they don’t belong in God’s good kingdom. They don’t celebrate who God is and what Jesus did. All those deeds and places of darkness don’t belong to the kingdom of heaven, but the art, the music, the singing and dancing that praise and celebrate the good in the world- they all have a place in the world to come. The art among us that rejoices in what is right and true. They will be remembered and commemorated; they will praise the name of Jesus, because they are true. And Jesus’ name rings in all the truths in this world. Jesus’ name is read on everything that stirs happiness and lights smiles of delight. Jesus’ name will be heard in every glorious valley that is seen and it can be heard in every word of encouragement. Jesus is the truth and the truth will set you free. That beautiful painting that brings you joy, it speaks a thousand words- all describing what the kingdom of heaven is, and that is what Jesus brought to this earth. The song that sings a word a hope, that this world isn’t truly so vile and mean, and those views you see when you climb a mountain or look out your window. The world to come is around us. The noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, and praiseworthy, cling to those things. Dwell among them for they are showing through good and honest deeds and things, people and places, the acts of compassion, works of art that show the good and shine on what is true and bring glimmers of hope that this world is going to make it. Nothing that beholds Jesus’ name will be forgotten, nothing will have been wasted, and works, deeds, and the beautiful creations of God- celebrating the name of Jesus show that eternal life is coming. Art is affirming this life and the kingdom of heaven into the next.
Art. Three small letters that bring huge hopes and affirmation. Three small letters that show love, bring inspiration, and the fervor of this world to come. This world isn’t done. There’s new creation entering and beauty is still being invented. The darkness may be here, be the beauty is what will stay.

David

You searched, You know
Through me, Your Love can show
To give glory where glory is due
It’s not about me, it’s all for you
It’s you my heart seeks
I cower and become meek
You are familiar of all my ways
Writer of the book ordained for all my days
Fearing you, The All-Knowing and God Almighty
Creator of the earth visually sightly
Of this earth, what shall I fear?
Your hand shall slay the enemies near
I am of worth in Your holy eyes
There is never a need for a disguise
Your signature, Your name, and Your breath
Engraved into my inmost being, further than death
Your works are wonderful, I know that full well
The sight and touch cause praises to impel
The beauty of creation is a source of your love
We are brought for of the same beauty thereof
How can we say anything, when you know every word
How can we reveal anything, when you know what has occurred
Finding new ways to show our love for You
We have to express in ways un-subdue
Your glory is more than I could ever give
But sacrifice is how we live
Pouring out love like water, from the heart
Giving everything within us to You is a start
When I awake, I am still with You
A new day afforded to construe
Only with You happiness is new
Only You that my heart pursues
O Lord You know my heart, and it’s time for it to meet You
O Lord Your Love can quickly imbue
Try me and test me
Set me free,
Of my ways
Thank you Lord, its You I can praise
For You as my guide
And all you provide
Lead Your way, O Lord
Into a new life restored
The way of the Everlasting, on wings that soar
The way my heart will finally find Yours

Why The Waste?

We meet David in a cave, King David in a cave, Thirsty. When David spoke aloud the physical condition of his thirst, the Three Chiefs in the cave went out to retrieve him some water. The water source they must use was the well in Bethlehem. The Philistines garrison was there, in Bethlehem, hence the reason David was in the cave. The Three made it back successfully; the risk of their lives was of that water, making the water’s worth more than just any other water. This water was retrieved for the thirst of King David. But King David did a funny thing when the water was placed into his dehydrated hands; “he poured it out before the Lord.” When David poured the water out, he wasn’t just pouring it out to bid to God what water was, but turning that water into what’s called a Drink Offering. The drink offering was what you gave to God before sacrificing the perfect lamb or the best livestock for the Lord. You gave a drink offering onto the alter, Jacob, in Genesis, is the first to have done this, he poured wine, then oil onto the alter before making a animal sacrifice. He was giving to God the sacrifice made for that water, the life risked for that water, making the water sacred, making the water worth more than David’s thirst. Walter brueggemann says, “That such a costly commodity is appropriately used for such a sacramental act.” David wants God to have the best, so by giving him water that is found sacred, his act of worship to the Lord was sacrificing what he found sacred, and that is sacred because of the risk and it is sacrificed as Holy, to a God that is holy.
To a Lord that would sacrifice what is sacred for us. David found what he could give, and gave it to God. These sacrifices are acts of worship to a God that is worth more than anything we find sacred. He is worth our praise, and praise can be poured out, poured out through the sacrifice. When Jesus’ sacred time was approaching, a women pours out her heart onto to Jesus through a alabaster jar of expensive perfume. The sacrifice wasn’t through the monetary value found in the perfume, what was sacred was what the perfume represented to her, Her Heart. The love her poured out by anointing Jesus with her soul and heart, and with every drop that leaves the bottle bestowing beauty and fragrance, and lavishing Jesus with what He deserves, Her Heart, Her Life, Her Sacrifice.
But the disciples ask a very logical question, “why the waste?” they ask, “This perfume could have been sold at a high price and given to the poor.”Valid point.But Jesus makes a bigger point, this act of worship unto Jesus was a sacrifice for His sacrifice, he says, “she did it in preparation for my burial”.
She was honoring the fact, Jesus is here. God is here. Love is here. And pouring out your love is the best sacrifice in worship. Sacrifice to sacrifice.
Pouring out what you have to offer to others can be a sacrifice. Doing what is hard for you can be a sacrifice. And that is an act of worship to God, an act of reverence to the ultimate sacrifice that he has given. But making this sacrifice is not always fair; you may hear that voice saying,Why the waste?
Breaking yourself open and pouring out your heart, your soul, your worth in expensive perfume. But the risk in dumping out the contents of your soul can be a waste, but it’s the act of doing so that’s the sacrifice. The risk in the sacrifice in saying, Love is here. God deserves the best. He deserves the part of us that is holy. The action. The part that can bring others to him.Our heart and soul, poured out onto the altar.

Vapor.

Time occurs to me as such a questionable concept. Is there an over abundance? Is there scarcely enough? Sometimes time feels like one big circle, then other some times feel like a vast long plane, with unknowing ironies lying ahead, and nonetheless, we still seem to squander our time rather than see to spending and paying toward a future, yet how much do we see of it in the end?
Forever is a long time. If your try and contemplate how long eternal or everlasting is, it’s interminable. In today’s day and age, looking up can be an odd thing to do. Just laying out and thinking. Just laying there in the middle of your world and looking at the sky. At any point of the day or night and at any point in any season or time, the sky is gorgeous. Any weather, any conditions, any craziness down below, the sky is still there, enviously outstanding. And besides the obvious physical beauty of it, the thing that hooks me the most is the mystery of it all. And I say all, in a plural sense, because the sky seems to me to be more than just a sky. Looking, seeing, and finding deeper and deeper into the sky is a little intimidating to me. Because no matter how many classes I attend to further my knowledge about how deep the vastness of the sky is, or what’s beneath the layer I can plainly see, I still look up and find everlasting so visibly apparent. The sky is so never ending. So humbling.
While outdoors thinking, and searching into our immense skies, breathing and taking in the glory of the creation for creation from the creator the sky is just the tip of the iceberg. Go from looking up, and then into within. When man was made, we came from dust. Mankind, came from dust. We, the divine creatures, chose for thinking and reasoning, came from the same dust that covers our earth and is trampled and stirred by each and any animal that is mobile. Dust and the never-ending vastness of sky are two incredibly un-unified aspects of this earth. In Ecclesiastes, it written that all people come from dust, then die and return to dust. So then how is it we are so very valuable. Why does the creator of the sky choose to dwell among the dust? Because we are not wholly dust. We are different BECAUSE God choose to dwell in us. We are HOLY dust.
Our life as dust, our life as a vapor, our life, so short, small, and fragile, is a lot of nothing compared to the eternity of the sky, of water, of rocks and land. To the Creator and Maker of all this and more,
To the everlasting Father and Son whom are
Forever and ever.

The dust and the sky coincide so well. This everlasting God has to ability to meet you where you are it’s
The Horizon. We may be dust, but it’s no matter for an eternal God. We may be a vapor, so misspent by the concept of time. But dust is dust:Romans 3:23
For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of GodThe dust is nothing compared to who and what God is. The everlasting. The coinciding. All the time we see in these lives that is so ongoing, so boring, so suffice or so overabundant is a vapor, is a breath, is a wind full of dust to the sky. To the God, the Creator who sees past all that knows where your time is to be spent. Struggles and worries without the Father waste time. They are unavoidable but why should we have to exert the extra energy when it could be spent being carried by the God who knows where to go.Romans 8:18 Future Glory.
I consider our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.Being a vapor and being dust is living. When we live, we are out of the dust, before we die, then return to dust. The small moment of life, we are given the breath of the Creator. And the equivalent of this divine Breath is the Spirit, The Holy Spirit given to us by Jesus, as he descended into heaven, not descending back into the dust. We have the Breath, the Spirit and the Creator holding us down to earth, holding us, as fragile as we are, keeping us timeless. This same Spirit can prevent us from returning to dust, because of Jesus we can return to heaven, return to the Father. We can return to the sky and praise, because we can accept time for what it is, accept struggles for what they represent, because when the end is awakening, because you’ve lived the way you were created. Our life is but a vapor. Time is meaningless.

Blinding Darkness

One of my best friends wrote this poem a while ago, she's immensely talented, and showed me this wonderful poem, at a very crucial point in my faith, provoking me to wonder provoking me to think.

Darkness grows
in the hearts of men.
All love is gone
as if it'd never been.

Selfishness holds the mind.
Anger controls your words.
Hate begins all actions.
Bitterness builds and stores.

So when people who love sin,
run when they see his light.
His forgiveness knows no bounds,
but still they cower in night.

He knows all their names
has felt every pain they've nursed,
but they don't know their God,
So continue life with hearts emptied by thirst
and stained with darkness.
-Hayley Mendes
as i read this, i drew mental images of literal people running away. running away from a God who wants to hold you, especially in darkness, especially in pain, and especially wounded. i saw angry people, angry and confused people running into darkness. thinking that the darkness was whats best, was what love was and where emotions were dark and deary.
but as they're running away from God, who sits there: holding all their needs in his hands and forgiving them each and every step they take in the opposite direction, yet still they're running from a providing God into darkness, deeper and deeper, darker and darker, i futher imagine my loving forgiving, providing God, sitting there watching with love, watching with hope, and wanting them more and more wondering,
"Don't you need a flashlight?"

Signature.

In contract law, it is the signature of the person who is bound, that is required. In a signature, the name is an essential part, of the mark making. When signing your autograph, mark, or signature, it can often be difficult to read, such as a scribble or an illegible scrawl. In art and music, a signature can be a unique handiwork of the artist, something that identifies themselves with others, that shows the characteristics of their mind in a tangible or audible work. When you’ve formed something of your very own, you often want to be credited for that on your behalf, essentially when it is something magnificent. The entire making of the magnificence in the glory of your creation is something you want to be proud of and adding a piece of yourself to it makes it all the more brilliant. God more often than not gives himself a name, such as I AM, Alpha and Omega, Beginning and the End. He distinguishes his being as the Beginning and the End, seeing Him as everything in between the beginning and the end of time. Throughout the entire bible, God sticks to the same images of being a Father, Shepherd and also continues to the names
He over and over again identifies Himself with.
In the Old Testament, God calls himself the I AM, continuing, in the New Testament, Jesus and many generations of Christians also recalls our God as the I AM. And Jesus refers also to himself as the Alpha and Omega. Alpha, being the first letter in the Hebrew alphabet and Omega being the last, God is every word and letter in between.
The first chapter of the Gospel of John, it tells of when God’s Word became fleshJohn 1
1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was with God in the beginning. 3 All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.
Thus, God being every single Word, When Jesus lets the all of creation know that He is also the Alpha and Omega, He is The Word, and every single word. He’s the first and the last, the beginning and the end.
He is “God’s signature”.
God sent His very own signature, wrapped in human flesh and, through God’s signature, we are His work of art and a masterpiece, coming first though His Son and His very Signature unto Life and into Being. And coming into Being is like the bounding of the contract law, we have God’s contract, signed, sealed, and delivered
What more could we ask for?
Although, His signature can be difficult to read, when we are just mere flesh, especially without The Word. Adding just the thoughts and ideas of our wonderful and majestic Savior into our lives, God’s Signature in us can simply go from an illegible scrawl into a wonderful masterpiece.
Words are just words, when coming from us, they can hurt, heal, inspire, reject, love, or hate. But coming from God, His Words are the words of Life. Ending the Old Testament, God silenced His “mouth” for 400 years, and finally, FINALLY, He ended the silence with The Word. He spoke again, using the only Word that could ever matter to the world, the only Word that could save humanity, The Word of Life.John 3:16
16"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.His Son, Our Savior, and not just an addition to history, but a new era, The A.D. a completely new transformation of time itself, The NEW Beginning and and the End.1 John 1
1That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.God is our artist, and made us in the likeness of His Son, made us with His Signature. And sending His Son, so that His beauty, brilliance, and magnificence could see it’s maker with their very own five senses, We all can have a greater Life, and proclaim the Word is the Lord, the Beginning and the End, the Alpha and Omega.