Daily Gratitude Year 4- Day 222: Today, I am grateful for recycling, up-cycling artists who create beauty through quality, masterful workmanship with discarded items.
It is no secret that art speaks. It touches our souls...likely because it goes back to the soul breath from our creative God. If you "aren't into art", I believe it is because your haven't discovered what makes your soul sing. It is a vision issue. Everyone is passionate about something. When we discover it...our vision clears and we find our purpose.
Some build ships while others design quilts. A tractor can be a thing of beauty. The art of fine cuisine is not really in second place to good, old comfort food. Art is as diverse as the people who create it.
Paints, watercolors, fabric, paper, camera, seeds, glass, clay, steel and the dirt of the earth are merely the mediums. Each work of heart... is a work of art. In the artists hands, it is changed. First...the artist envisions. Then, a new creation begins.
I gravitate toward up-cycled art. To see discarded items becoming something new and desired because the artist sees potential and whispers redemption. What's not to love about that? I see a clear spiritual analogy in re-cycled art.
The very things...the past trials. tattered spots and brokenness...that make us feel unworthy, can become "the thing" that allows us to become something beautiful when he re-creates us. Through His forgiveness, grace and mercy we become new. Old things pass away...and all things become new.(Revelation 21:5 speaks, again) At the touch of The Master's hand or in one breath from His omnipotent mouth, he speaks the word and chaos comes to order.
Yet, our God is never too tired, too busy or too "over-it" to place his Hand on our messy lives and turn them into something new. Something unique and beautiful comes from the tired, worn out and discouraged. He is life. He gives new life. He gives MORE life... with an abundance we can never experience on our own.
This truth is the reason that wealth never satisfies and why God's peace mystifies the world. It cannot be explained... only experienced. We seek power and control... but the calm comes to the soul that surrenders to be clay in the potter's hand. "Not my will, but thine."
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. -Ephesians 2:10
He planned for us to walk this path together. He desires a relationship. He doesn't give up easily He will not take back or power to choose or reject him. It is what makes humans special... and separate from the animals.(Animals must respond to the nature God placed inside them, unless carefully re-trained by human imprinting). The concept is so simple, but so profound...all at the same time.
He wants us to come with our "garbage" and let him worry about what we can become. For those who choose that path of full surrender... I have never heard one uttered regret. "Those who seek me will find me, when they seek me with all of their hearts."
But from there you will seek the Lord your God and you will find him, if you search after him with all your heart and with all your soul. -Deuteronomy 4:29
“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. -Matthew 7:7-8
He wants us to reclaim us and change us. He wants to not only be our "enough" but our "more than enough". He is our more! The over-the-top peace that calms any storm and satisfies. He is our peace. We are His masterpiece.
I can't resist wordplay. His peace as he fills our missing piece and makes our hearts whole again. The piece lost through sin, defiance, self-absorption and rejection is reclaimed, re-cycled and restored.
Today, I am grateful for recycling, up-cycling artists who create beauty through quality, masterful workmanship with discarded items. And for a God who made recycling & up-cycling possible through Jesus.
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