Art, Beauty

I feel like life is SO busy right now. I'm doing many wonderful things. My students have quite quickly become a HUGE part of my life. Every day I'm teaching one place or another. There's days that it gets stressful... but I feel so blessed to have work - and not just any old work, but work that I love. Work where I get to help others discover how to use their God-given creative spirits to the fullest potential!

I get really passionate when I think about art, creativity and our Creator. I came across an article by T.M. Moore not too long ago and have included below a short excerpt from "Why Art Matters".

Why does God consider art so important that He made such varied use of it for communicating His will to His people?

Many reasons come to mind: art’s ability to appeal to the imagination and engage the affections; its value as an aid to memory; the balance between form and freedom inherent in the arts, suggesting both parameters and liberties for our lives; the experience of delight and pleasure art can provide; the universal appeal of art; and so forth. Far from being a mere frill, art has always played a central role in human society. Their souls are impoverished, as is their experience of life, for whom art has little importance.

But by far the greatest value of the arts to the Christian is their ability to nurture the sense of beauty and, thus, to train our hearts and minds to know, enjoy, and relate better to Him who is the Perfection of Beauty. Modern and postmodern artists have so relativized the concept of beauty that even to discuss its role in the arts is to risk appearing passé or uninformed. But this is a strictly recent phenomenon. The history of art is replete with discussions of beauty and its importance in the arts, and, where Christians have entered those discussions, they have argued for the role of art in nurturing our sense of beauty and helping us to know and worship God.

This is exactly why I love art and creativity in all its forms. True art has the ability to slice through barriers to bring us directly to the brilliance and beauty of our Lord. By revealing the Truth (and exposing the opposite for what it really is) we are able to revel and thrive in His gracious love... and beauty. This, to me, is what makes any art worth doing and working and being. I love it. Michael Card, Madeleine L'Engle and Calvin Seerveld have also written some amazing things on this topic. I may quote them in later posts. Suffice it to say I get so excited reading, conversing, discussing, doing... and teaching about these very things.

Thank you, Lord, for giving us the spark of the imagination and creative vision!!!