"Art - Into The Depths of God" - Calvin Miller

"Deep" is not a place we visit in our search of God, it's what happens to us when we find him.

Should we not all be flexible before we know God's will? Should we not all be immovable after we understand what he wants done? My suspicion is that only those who can bless the furnace ever understand the gold.

Our call puts a holy centreredness in our living. When the light shines in the darkness, does the darkness merely leave or is it changed to light?

We must break the habit of treasuring our treasures and develop the habit of treasuring the abundance of God's grace.

It's amazing that we take our individual schedules so seriously that we never wonder if God has anything else for us to do.

Why should we stop and consider art at all?

For two reasons. First, art locates us in the human condition. Second, art is the way in which artists-and Christians -define themselves.

The most popular form of art among evangelicals may be the story.

Eugene Peterson -we tell stories to locate ourselves in the human condition.

Stories like rolling snowballs, grow with telling. We must allow the power of our stories to widen rather than narrow our province. The story of Christ and the telling of it is the central art of Christianity . Ia is art universal. It is the art that drives the entire mission enterprise.

The problem is that God almost always asks of us tasks that scare us to death.

Are Christians willing to make God beautiful and to let their creative impulses become the art that defines them? Perhaps the art form at which we need to become adept is the telling of the gospel story. Our story is most crucial when it touches heaven with its desire to define God.

What artist has not known the visceral amputation that art demands? Art and faith both know this agony. What servant of Christ does not hunger to give The Lord more and more of the inner life?