The Greater Story...Wow.

Yesterday at church, Seth painted one 12 x 8 foot painting during each service. Four services, four paintings. While everyone was listening to our pastor speak about God's Greater Story, they were watching Seth paint it.
The story ends like this: God's ultimate purpose is that His Glory would be fully displayed through His people who reign with Him in Creation (Revelation 21 and 22.) He wants us to have a relationship with Him and He wants to do this whole beautiful creation thing together. Wow. Just that together part blows my mind. That a great and powerful God would want to do life with me. But what about the beginning of the story?
God created a wondrous creation and a people to reign in it with Him.(Genesis 1 and 2) It sounds a lot like the end. So what went wrong? What was man's answer to God's invitation?
He/she decided that they wanted to rule without God. (Genesis 3)
I don't know about you, but I can't do anything without God, but still that foolishness that Eve thought would be wisdom, runs in my blood and I struggle every day to remember that I can't do it with out God. And so many times I try!
So what did God do in response to our choice?
He became a man, to suffer and die the death we deserve...so that we can have the life we don't. Whoa... I can't even write that with out a whole range of emotion going through me.
And why did God have to go through this whole story? Why didn't he just skip to the end? Because with out all of it, we wouldn't fully know who God is. With out our "fall from grace" we wouldn't know that God is full of grace and mercy; which is such a beautiful part of life. With out Jesus's death, we could never know the height and width and depth of His love. How could we? Every piece has it's place in the story.
Here are Seth's paintings. The first is Creation, the second: The Fall, third: Redemption, and the fourth is Re-creation.


And I love this picture the most. To me it symbolizes how Seth has joined his personal story with God's greater story. Because Jesus has taken Seth's place on the cross, Seth has a hope that will not disappoint, because his life is secure. The end of Seth's story will be the the same ending as God's story. And Seth is taking his part in the greater story right now. Amazing.

The Art Festival

I'll have a booth set up (at 1210 Franklin Road • Brentwood, TN 37027) Friday night for the dance performances, Saturday and all day Sunday. Seth will be painting live (16 x 8' paintings) during each of the four church services on Saturday and Sunday and he will be doing a live demonstration at 2:30. There will be various music and dance performances, a lot of artists, kids crafts and food (Off the Grill) all day Sunday. Come down for this event. It will be so much fun. For more information on the schedule of the day see here.

The Walls Came Tumbling Down

We have been studying the book of Hebrews in church and we have been in chapter 11 where we explore what it means to live by faith. Verse 30 uses the example of the Isrealites walking around the city of Jericho until the walls fell down. So in the service today we talked about this place of faith where the Isrealites were trapped between a river at flood stage and a fortified enemy city. Between this "rock and a hard place" they were commanded by God to be circumsised, which also left them completely incapacitated. So here they were between two seemingly insurmountable obstacles AND they couldn't even fight! THEN God asks them to quietly walk around the enemy city a bunch of times and then shout. Weird. But because they trusted God, and obeyed, they lived and conquered.
Our pastor had the entire church listen to his directions once and we were to obey. They were this: everyone was to leave the auditorium and go to the field behind the church and then listen for a horn to blow, then we were to follow the pastor and walk completely around the building, go in the back doors and find our seat again, all without speaking. At first I thought that this was ridiculous because there was probably 1000 of us and dismissal after church is always a chaotic mess! But as we all silently obeyed, I was able to witness a small picture of how beautiful it is when together we obey the will of God, and how by being obedient, life works; even when it seems crazy to us. The whole church was able to follow the directions and get back into our seats in about ten minutes time, and it was peaceful and ordered. Amazing.
I so often find myself in an impossible situation where I am unable to go back, and I am also unable to move foward. I am completely weakened and have nothing to put my trust in but the Lord Himself. Today I was reminded that when I am in that place of impossibility, that it is a gift of grace. For in my human nature I am most willing to place my trust in anything that makes sense to me - even if it is not a good decision, instead of listening to God. So, when He puts me in that place where there is no one and nothing left but Him, I am thankful because I know that my life is not life with out Him. Even when it makes no sense to me, when I follow Him I truely LIVE! It is so exciting to me to see what God is going to do in the dire circumstances of my life! To see how He is going to sustain me, because He always does - in the most amazing ways. He has never given me a reason NOT to trust Him even though my natural instincts don't want to. He is faithful EVERY time I place my faith in Him. Now all I want is to be able to slow down so that I can LISTEN to Him, so that I can OBEY him, so that I can see the AMAZING things He has planned next for me!