How the Children Learned

In the Bible, parents had a massive responsibility to train, teach, exhort, discipline, and love their children. 

But what did it look like to make the context for such matters?

Consider just a sampling from the book of Proverbs the many artistic forms of training for children:

• Proverbs were given from Solomon to his son. 

• Encased within proverbs and stories, we find warnings, illustrations, and commands.

• We find if-then scenarios.

• Daddy Solomon used metaphor and vivid imagery to brand his message in his child’s imagination.

• We find tons of repetition, explanation, and reasoning.

• Personal stories (“When I was a son…”)

• Imagery from life (“consider the ant…”)

• Vision-casting (“A wise son does such and such…”)

• Solomon often helps his child’s imagination consider the goodness of life that comes from pursuing wisdom.

Besides Proverbs, we find story and song (in Psalm 78) and proclamation (*cough, singing psalms) to the future generations (Psalm 48). Generations were meant to brag on God’s mighty acts to the next (Psalm 145).

Give It Away

Give it away.

Besides learning to be content and enjoy the gift of artistry from my Father, I’ve learned how fulfilling it is to give that gift away to others.

God gave us gifts, skills, and talents to serve and give away.

This is not merely giving away artwork (which I enjoy doing) but giving away how to do artwork.

There are always people out there who need things (time, talent, skills, mental bandwidth, material goods and services, etc.) you particularly possess.

How Artists Cultivate Thankfulness

One day, it hit me. As I checked my inbox on a particular email hosting website, I observed 8 out of the 10 first, non-sponsored, news stories in my newsfeed were either about death or missing people. 

I realized this vile news exposure was the norm. 

War, famine, murder, lies, and all kinds of other explicit content flood every screen we use. And that’s just the external onslaught of information. What about the baggage we carry with us all day? Sin, temptations, damaged relationships with our parents or our children, struggling to pay rent, struggle to find purpose. 

How is it exactly that an artist is supposed to cultivate thankfulness again?

It is so easy to imagine all the bad about our life and this world. 

For all life’s toil, let us take hold of a few things:

“7 Go, eat your bread with pleasure, and drink your wine with a cheerful heart, for God has already accepted your works. 8 Let your clothes be white all the time, and never let oil be lacking on your head. 9 Enjoy life with the wife you love all the days of your fleeting[c] life, which has been given to you under the sun, all your fleeting days. For that is your portion in life and in your struggle under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 9:7-9).

From this, I’d like to point out that artists can rest assured in certain assurances in life. 

Regarding our lives, gifts, and talents, God gave us the following:

• Divine placement of the culture, community, and time period we grow up in (Deuteronomy 32:8; Acts 17:26-27).

• If you are married, rest in that God gave you your spouse (Proverbs 19:14)

• If you have kids, that too (Psalm 129:3-5)

• Your talents, skills, and gifts (Deut 8:17-18; Mt 24-25; Eph 2:10)

Even if the day is toilsome, artists can thank God for their lives and creative inclinations.

Momma Missions

Growing up, it was important to get into college.

This was because, so the logic goes, if one gets into a college, their education and future have some assurance and stability. 

But obviously, that’s not all there is to the story. If schooling were an end to itself, many graduates were left asking on graduation day: what comes next?

A similar dynamic applies to missions.

We must remember the mission is the context for all developed theology in the New Testament. Not the other way around.

As Martin Kähler famously noted, “Missions is the mother of theology.”  

What if we let momma missions have her car back?

If All the Bibles Went Away…

If all the Bible’s went away, who in your life would you follow around to remember what Jesus was like?

Spend your life attached to someone like that and being someone like that.

Something Kept Pulling Him Back

I love the way Eugene Peterson translated Mark 6:20. Reminds me of the metaphorically nature of following Christ. We’re drawn to the beauty of Christlikeness.

“Whenever [Herod] listened to [John]
he was miserable with guilt—
and yet he couldn’t stay away.
Something in John kept pulling him back.”

Mark 6:20b (The Message)

If I Designed A Training Center for Artists

If I were designing a mission training center for artists, here’s what I’d focus on:

• Vision: We’d anchor a worldview for artistic missional engagement.

• Gifts Discovery: We’d examine your personal gifts, talents, skills, purpose, angst, and dreams.

• Church Planting: We’d connect all niche mission ideas into the larger context of expanding and establishing God’s kingdom. 

• Equipping: We’d train how to build relationships through serving and building trust with others.

Love is Custom-Made

We create custom made guitars, vehicles, houses, cities, and sculptures.

All the things which fashion our lives contain the world’s raw materials which are then customized to our benefit and liking. When something is custom made, we find it more valuable. We attribute greater care and finesse to something custom made. 

Ought agape love not be the same?