Sometimes I feel a little bit ridiculous for being a writer.
My degree is in English, which is one of those degrees that causes people to cock their head and ask, "And what do you plan to do with that?"
I always sort of had this funny feeling that I was going to be the child that lived in the cardboard box.
I'm the only person in my immediate family who didn't (or isn't planning to) major in a math of science related field. I'm the only one who (thus far) decided a semester before graduation that I didn't want to do exactly what I'd majored in (for me that would've been journalism). I'm the only one who (thus far) spent the first two years after graduation working a job completely unrelated to their major.
Being an artist — of any kind — in this world is a slightly funny business.
There's a lot of encouragement toward other degrees and other fields. It doesn't pay well, they say. It's too hard, they say. There's so much work involved, they say. You better have a back-up plan, they say. You're never going to make it, they say.
But have all the naysayers ever stopped to consider what would happen if all of those would-be music, theatre, art, and writing majors actually listened to the naysayers? What if all those would be musicians, theatrical performers, artists, and writers listened to the negative words of the non-artists and stopped creating?
What do you think would happen?
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I've often felt a bit out of place in the kingdom. And by "the kingdom," I mean the kingdom of God.
I think, often, there is a strong emphasis placed on finding your gifts and talents and using them for the Lord, but the balance is off.
Sometimes I feel like because I don't feel that my primary gifts are teaching or preaching or hospitality or whatever other "spiritual" thing you can think of — because I feel like my primary gifts are artistic — that, maybe, somehow, I'm not worth quite as much to the kingdom of God, to the ministry of the Gospel.
That's a little bit ridiculous, when you think about it, but that's how I feel sometimes.
When you read through the Scriptures, it doesn't seem like there's much emphasis put on the arts.
Sure, the Psalms talk about singing and dancing and praising God, and we know that David played the harp beautifully, but when we think of David, we don't think of harp playing. We think of a mighty king who slayed a giant as a young boy. We think of a warrior.
When we think about the most memorable peopled in Scripture, we don't really think of many artists.
We think of priests and prophets. We think of warriors and kings. We think of apostles and disciples. We think of queens and companions. We think of a lot of different people who make up a beautiful, diverse history of the faith. But we don't think about artists.
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As I've written before, I'm reading through the Bible again this year. I'm currently in the book of 1 Kings, but a few months back, I was in Exodus. And here's something I learned this year.
God wrote a love letter to artists.
You read that correctly. He wrote a love letter to artists and He placed it surreptitiously in the pages of a chapter in the middle of Exodus.
I didn't even catch it when I read it, to be honest. It took a blog post by Jon Acuff to point it out to me, and when I read it, I was hit with a sense of such joy and delight.
The first bit of Exodus contains the history of Moses' life in Egypt, in Midian, his encounter with the burning bush, and his subsequent return to Egypt to act as God's deliverer for the Israelites. We then read a lot about the plagues, how Pharaoh eventually lets the Israelites go but chases them to the edge of the Red Sea but God shows His power and saves them.
Once we get past all of that, God starts giving some instructions to Moses to pass on to the Israelites. Some of those instructions include some pretty specific ideas about exactly how God want the temple to be built.
He gives instructions about the measurements of the temple, the materials they should use, what the priests are to wear, and more. And then He talks to the artists.
That's right. The second group of people He addresses after the priests is artists.
Didn't expect that one, did you?
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Because of the way our society currently functions — constantly chasing after the latest technology, praising geniuses, and spouting the importance of STEM majors — I think it's easy for us to dismiss art. It's easy to dismiss the love of a beautiful painting, an exquisite song, a stirring theatrical performance, or a well-crafted story as something less than a necessity.
It's easy to dismiss them as something we only want or like to have, and not something we need.
But I'm beginning to think that maybe that's not the case and maybe the gifts of artistry are a much bigger deal than you or I have been taught to believe.
When you think about it, art has been around for a lot longer than science or math or technological research. Societies got along for thousands of years without them. But art? That's always been there. People have always loved music and art and writing and theater.
Art — of any kind — has a way of touching people that nothing else can. And that's something I think is pretty special.
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There's a second part to God's letter to the artists, though.
A few chapters later, in Exodus 36, we learn that those who helped build the Ark of the Covenant were the ones with the skill and who were willing to use the gifts they'd been given.
As artists, we've been given a special call.
We've been called to interpret the beauty of this world, the beauty of life, the beauty of the Gospel in unique ways — through songs, through performance, through dance, through painting or sketching or drawing.
And through writing.
We've been asking to give of ourselves in a different way than those with other gifts, because any art that's worth being created costs something for the creator. We have to be willing to give of ourselves to create that which we've been asked to create.
That is something I've been reminding myself of on days that are hard, on days where I don't feel good enough, on days where it seems like my words don't matter.
In the end, it's my choice.
I can be bold and share my words with the world. I can use my talent for writing — and other things — to share my unique perspective of God and His love with this world.
Or I can sit on the sidelines. I can be unwilling to share my heart, to spend what must be spent in order to create. And that might seem easier, less painful, safer. But what would I miss out on?
Those artists in Exodus 36 missed out on something pretty big. They missed out on created the Ark of the Covenant because they weren't willing to use their gifts for God's glory.
I don't want that to be said of me when the times comes. I don't want to sit on my hands, one of the unwilling. It will hurt and it will cost, but what comes of it will be far more beautiful than even I can imagine.
Are you an artist — of any kind? What keeps you from creating? Have you ever felt a little crazy for wanting to be an artist? Or like maybe you should be doing something else because it isn't "practical"? What keeps you going anyway?
-----------Photo credit: Erik Jacobs.
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