I’ve been blessed to have grown up in the place that I did and in the manner that I did. We were perpetually surrounded by the wonders of God’s creation and His amazing miracles in everyday life. Nature was a huge inspiration in me getting into photography and the arts. It’s helped me see God in ways that I know I wouldn’t have otherwise seen and it’s been an amazing journey.
Years ago, a few of us were up well past midnight talking about how God works and someone asked me what my experience of God in everyday life was like. It was a rather easy question to answer and yet really difficult to explain. I started off with “this might sound silly but…” and I went on to describe how not once, not twice, but countless times God has used nature to reassure me of His presence and faithfulness. It could be noticing a new bird on the walk to school on a particularly rough day or an exceptionally beautiful sunset on an evening when living didn’t seem worthwhile. It could be seeing the snow-capped mountains in the distance, a butterfly on my shoulder, or a simple yet brief gust of wind as my thoughts dragged me down. That, to me, was always God. It was the same God that helped David defeat Goliath with a sling and five stones. The same God who fed over five thousand with five loaves and two fish. The same God who asked Moses to use a common staff. The same God in whom faith like a mustard seed can move mountains. The God of small things just as much as He is the God of the universe. I didn’t realise it at first and was quick to brush it off as coincidence but when it happened over and over again, I just couldn’t deny that it was His doing. That was a voice speaking to me and reminding me that I have a loving Father who cares.
Deciding to purpose a career in a creative field was tough but it was a call I just couldn’t ignore despite just about everyone around me cautioning me and the mountain of misgivings that threatened to erupt and kill a dream. What saddened me was the outright rejection of creative careers by most people in the church. On the one hand we claimed to worship a God of true beauty, unending creativity, unmatched variety, and awesome majesty, but on the other we actively discouraged His children from developing their creativity and even make a career out of it.
We claim to follow a Bible that is chock-full of metaphors, illustrations, and analogies and yet we make God’s message out to be some rather boring, unrelatable and completely irrelevant story. Christ Himself used so many relatable and relevant stories and examples to explain deeper truths that our human minds are too small to really grasp.
All of us in various walks of life put so much thought and effort into the things of the world that are temporary and yet when it comes to the things of Christ most of us tend to approach our tasks with an attitude of compromise. When the world commands our most creative ideas and concepts, and the best of our work, how much more does Christ deserve that! It’s one thing to have that attitude of compromise, but it’s worse when we enforce it on others and make them compromise when it comes to creating for the Kingdom. We tend to brush off certain interests, careers, hobbies, job descriptions as unimportant and irrelevant, not realising that we need each other.
There’s a song called City on a Hill by Casting Crowns that puts this to words quite well
You see the poets thought the dancers were shallow
And the soldiers thought the poets were weak
And the elders saw the young ones as foolish
And the rich man never heard the poor man speak
But one by one, they ran away
With their made up minds to leave it all behind
And the light began to fade
In the City on the Hill, the City on the Hill
Each one thought that they knew better
But they were different by design
Instead of standing strong together
They let their differences divide
…
But it was the rhythm of the dancers
That gave the poets life
It was the spirit of the poets
That gave the soldiers strength to fight
It was the fire of the young ones
It was the wisdom of the old
It was the story of the poor man
That needed to be told
You must have heard of the quote “We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race, and the human race is filled with passion. Medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.” – John Keating (Robin Williams), Dead Poets Society
God has created us with a variety that knows no bounds and He has given us gifts that really make life so interesting but we tend to force people into boxes that we’ve made for ourselves. While people in general becomes increasingly visually literate and revels in beauty, as Christians we don’t even seen the beauty that surrounds us. We make life boring for ourselves.
And yet there are those among us who create products like YouVersion that are beautifully done and go hand in hand with a pretty attractive and encouraging social media feed. It’s so well done, in fact, that it ends up becoming a shining example even in the non-Christian world. You might also do well to point to the feeds of BSF, Toby Mac, and so many others that also put out consistently good content. My point is there are Christians putting their best into God’s work, so it definitely can be done. We aren’t the first to think about it, let alone to do it. After all true creativity flows from the Creator.
This has been something that God has really been using to reignite this fire in me over the last few years. Timely Wanderings was an idea that had been relegated to the recesses of my mind as I made one excuse after another and didn’t follow His calling for me. I put everything I had into helping others turn their dreams into a reality. Dreams that might last the span of a human life, at most. That’s pretty useless, if you ask me. And yet we have been called to invest in the kingdom of God. Honestly, I haven’t really been doing that. I’m not advocating just leaving our jobs and moving on to the street, but rather re-prioritising and putting God first no matter what it is that we do, or who we are.
God has given me so much, taught me so much, helped me learn so much and I’ve given Him nothing but scraps, if that.
I’m not really here to preach but rather just to share my experience with God and pray that you join in too.
We all have our own stories to share- stories of our relationship with God. Let’s share that in our unique way.
We need people from all walks of life. We need each other.
Let go of the what if’s and take that leap of faith.
Big magic in the mundane
The big picture in a small frame
Everything is sacred when you take time to notice
Big love happens in the small moments
– JJ Heller (Big Love, Small Moments)
