“You Make Beautiful Things Outta Dust”
That song from Gungor has spoke to me most this past month. I’ve been in search for Beauty my whole life…I would even dare to say that has been my pursuit. I’m an artist… and more and more I realize that this is the gift God has given me. I love to play music, sing, dance, act, write, and draw/paint/take photos. Somehow, I’ve been blessed with a combination of these mediums of expression. As artists we desire to capture the highest image or sensation of perfection we can grasp. We die to find THE IDEA that is the complete mix of emotion, awe, color, pleasure, and knowledge. I have become so frustrated with this task…that I have lost the will to pursue it. It takes so much work and in the end, I don’t feel like it’s worth the sweat and tears. The perfectionist side of me refuses to taint, to mess up. For this reason, I have grown impatient with my music life and I would even say insecure with the idea that I, myself, am an expression of beauty.
And yet, a side of “beauty” I haven’t touched before taunts me. The French are about aesthetics and expression. The artists here master their craft well... their “mediocre” is a step up from what I have been encountering back home. It’s inspirational. It’s intimidating. The music, the visual art, the dance, the fashion, the people… There’s not a moment I don’t encounter it. I have art museums at my finger tips, music conservatories with diligent students, the normal average Parisian dresses well, I can find awesome hip hop dancers nearly any days at Les Champs Elysees, or ballet dancers at l’Opera. It’s amazing.
Then I doubt. Why do I try? Why do I care? But then I realize. I have the exact thing I have been searching for. I have God, I have Jesus. I am His and He is mine. He IS Beauty itself. I have barely even seen a glimpse of Him and yet he gives Himself freely by grace. I have been invited to touch this Beauty…to know it, to be in relationship. All this time, I have been finding Beauty. The one thing that so many artists have not encountered yet. It doesn’t take a Christian to be good at art; thankfully God graciously gave others ,who do not yet know Him, an ability to capture glory and aestheticism. But they don’t know the Creator of all creators, the Artist of all artists, the Author of authors, the Orchestrator…the Alpha, Omega. I am loved and called by Beauty itself. So many artists are dying to find Perfection and yet they’re going the other way. He has made me beautiful… I need to know that and internalize it. And what’s crazier is…the fact He can make something that is worthless … beautiful. Beauty from Pain and beauty from dust.
And now He asks me…to join Him. To co-create and to express what I’ve seen, what I’ve heard, what I know, WHO I know. I’m not sure how. I’m still figuring that out. I’m not completely perfected yet, and I will mess up. But God is beautiful, I am beautiful, and from dust, I am still being made beautiful. Perhaps I haven’t been wasting my time. I’ve been spending time with the Master and Creator Himself. I want to see dust come to life… As I’ve seen Him do…in the world, in the bible, in others, in myself. May He give me grace to be used. Soli Deo Gloria.
