We are continuing our Friday Everyday Grace series with Nacole Simmons, who blogs at Six in the Sticks. Nacole digs deep, and today she wrestles with art and faith and how the two intersect. I was delighted to meet Nacole in person last April at the Jumping Tandem retreat, and I was struck by her sweet, beautiful spirit and her willingness to be vulnerable and real.
Please do stop by and say hi to Nacole at her place. You can also connect with her on Twitter.
I walk out into the harsh light after staring at a computer screen, and it only takes an instant, but then the sun begins to warm me from head to toe like warm butter spread thick on bread in the morning for an empty, growling stomach. And I lift my eyes to the heavens, though I can barely stand it.
And I think to myself, you know, most people don’t want to hear the hard stories, the hard truths.
It was in a beautiful post I read that made me think differently…I spun the words round and round...We need to stop wasting our precious God-granted time here on earth with frivolous things and get about the business of honing and enjoying the beautiful gifts He’s graced us with. This is what makes us a good steward as Jesus pointed out in Matthew 25. And God wants us to delight in Him and His gifts bestowed–
“Delight yourself in the Lord…He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun.” Psalm 34: 4-9
I’ve heard it said ’til I think my ears will wither and my heart will die that art is an idol and anything we do outside of actively making God first– is a lie, and unless we are sacrificing our time unto Him, then all our energies and talents and loves and pursuits are useless and meaningless.
In Psalm 43; 4, the psalmist says God is his joy and his delight.
When we delight ourselves in Him, in the Creator of colors, of words, of sunsets, of the sound of my tennis shoes swift on pavement, of fabrics that are made from cotton fields–does He not make our righteousness shine like the dawn.
I turn it gently over in my head, like a smooth rock that’s been worn down with time and age and rough waters, and it lies there–this question. What makes me righteous, what could possibly make this selfish soul shine like the dawn, and what could make my gavel come down so perfectly that the sun is set loose in bursts of flames?
“But in our time something new has been added. What Moses and the prophets witnessed to all those years has happened. The God-setting-things-right that we read about has become Jesus-setting-things-right for us. And not only for us, but for everyone who believes in him. For there is no difference between us and them in this. Since we’ve compiled this long and sorry record as sinners (both us and them) and proved that we are utterly incapable of living the glorious lives God wills for us, God did it for us. Out of sheer generosity he put us in right standing with himself. A pure gift. He got us out of the mess we’re in and restored us to where he always wanted us to be. And he did it by means of Jesus Christ.” Rom. 21-24
“He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.” Rom. 4:25
“You , my brothers, were called to be free…The entire law is summed up in a single command: Love your neighbor as yourself.” Gal. 5:13-14
If we are called to be free, then doesn’t God get the glory when we are doing what He’s made us in His image to do, creating? He IS the master creator, after all.
Could it be said that in seasons when we’ve neglected time with Him, when we are hardened through our trials, that He still gets the glory through our joy-making, piano-banging, our sobbing, our barely-making-it-through-bed-time-routine nights and our scarcely squeaked out prayers through dried and cracked desert -wandering lips?
When we are parched, and there is nothing left of us, because we are just crawling along through dust searching for that drop of water, and we think it’s all about us, because we desperately need survival, and our whole human soul aches for it until we just want death, does He still take joy in us then?
Hasn’t he set it up this way, that through heartache and hard knocks, He is Hero. Through victory and validation, he is Vindicator. Through plunder and pain, He is Protector, and in times of power and position, He is still Papa. And I believe that maybe this was His plan, that in all things He is glorified, even when we can’t find faith to look up.
John Piper so ardently passionately claims that it is God-glorifying and God-honoring when we joy in Him, when we delight in Him and are full or rapture over the gifts he’s bestowed, when we pause in awe at His beauty.
And beauty comes in so many forms. We need to think outside of the box.
Hours could be and have been spent in prayer on knees through the ages–knees worn thin and bones grown weary through the exhausting pushing and toiling –and I daresay this will continue until man ceases to exist–as long as man is man and his nature is weak, he will make it his business to be perfect and he will try and fail and try and fail again at this ancient ritual.
Isn’t God most glorified when we are truly most satisfied?
Completely in him, always and only in Him, whether in the desert, parched and withered, or in the spring clover, wet with dew.
Dare I whisper–that it isn’t our hours or even minutes counted with Him or not with him that truly matter?
Isn’t it really about our heart?
If God looks on the heart of a man {1 Sam. 16:7}, then this should really encourage all of us. The whole screwed up, fallen-short-of-the-glory-of-God lot of us!
God looks at my heart! My pile or lack of bible reading, my avid or neglected prayer, my conversing with him, or my silence when my heart is weary and there are no words– it. does. not. matter. to Him.
The spirit knows and tells Him for me. Jesus intercedes on my behalf while I’m painting, while I’m making coffee–my eyelids fluttering awake at the coffeepot. He talks to Him while I’m diapering bottoms, running around the lake, talking to my grandmother on the porch swing, baking a cake for someone, or capturing His glorious sunset with my point and shoot.
That’s a whole new level of freedom right there.
Isn’t it true that a child can neglect conversation with their parent, fail to show affection, even fail to create something lovely to make the parent proud, and yes, even show disobedience–and the parent’s heart still swells in admiration, love, joy, and complete contentment just at the privilege of getting to look on as they laugh, draw stick figures, say a new word, cry, stumble around and fall, express their own souls?
I think God is right proud, hearing our laughter, our beautiful crying, our beautiful being and says, “I created that.”
I know this is God’s truth about me. And you. All of us.
Before he came to the earth and endured anything, before he endured 40 days of fasting and testing, before he laid down his life for the sake of healing and helping others, before he went to the cross, God descended as a dove and said, “This is my son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” Matt. 3:16,17
It completely satisfies me to know that my Father is pleased, that He looks on me with love and delight, before I have proven anything. That my crazy creating is good enough, even when I screw it up, when I am a mess and I make a few people miserable.
I am His, I am whole, I am beloved–just by being.
So that leaves me with a burning question: Where to go from here? After a whole life of trying to do it by the book, and failing miserably, by thinking I have to live up to a standard, and my creations aren’t good enough–what do I want?
A full life of art, this is what I want. A life well-lived, consisting of love and laughter amongst the ones I care about. Days of discovering nature and running through fields, days of them calling Mama for the hundredth time and picking them up to console pain, days of burden and days of blessing. A one-piece life.
I want to be free of my own fears, self-doubt, my paranoia that I am and always will be a victim.
I want to use this freedom to care for others, to celebrate the successes of others, to genuinely look on with pride when I see my sister or brother expressing their art well and glorifying their Maker.
I want to believe grace is sufficient –for you, yes, but mostly for me. Because for me is where my faith stalls and stutters and clamors to get itself together.
I want to believe grace is sufficient so I can boast in my weakness and then not have to fight the urge to go hide under my covers away from the world’s piercing gaze. I want to believe grace is sufficient so I can have honest, open, loving, vulnerable and truth-bearing and God-honoring friendships and not have to throw up that old wall, that prison that saves me from their judging glances, their hugs of pity, their parties of rescue–the prison that keeps me a miserable captive.
I want to step out from behind the stage curtains that conceal and protect, out of the shadows of lies, and I want to live a life that makes music– the kind that has the house filled with the aroma of cookies when kids come in from a tiring day of school, that gets up early in the morning light just to slosh color on a blank canvas, or go for a run, lungs expanding, making room for more in my life– more music, more singing, more noise, more Mama!’s, more comforting the broken-hearted, more humming a song of praise or a tune of hip-hop.
And I don’t want to shrink back from anything. Because it’s all art. And in Him we’re free.
We. are. free.
“Christ has set us free to live a free life. So take your stand! Never again let anyone put a harness of slavery on you. I am emphatic about this. The moment any one of you submits to circumcision or any other rule-keeping system, at that same moment Christ’s hard-won gift of freedom is squandered. I repeat my warning: The person who accepts the ways of circumcision trades all the advantages of the free life in Christ for the obligations of the slave life of the law.” Gal. 5; The Message
Nacole Simmons is a non-conformist, fashion-loving southern mom of four girls, wife to one good, steady, car-building man. She’s a Jesus-follower, grace-seeker, and home-lover who adores spending weekends reading books in the hammock, or riding horses and roasting marshmallows over a campfire under a starry sky. She is honest to a fault, and speak straight to the elephant in a room because she doesn’t do small talk well. Nacole loves writing the brave things, pulling out the things that are stuffed deep inside.
