Today I had the chance to visit an art museum in Springfield, MO, a couple minutes away from where I go to school.
I’ll be honest with you, art and I have never really gotten along all that well. Something about it always seems to creep me out. I feel as if some artists have a longing to express some of the most bizarre, disturbing, or intimate feelings on a canvas. Even as I typed a portion of this I was sitting in a room full of clown paintings.
Can you get more creepy than that?!
One thing, however, that I really did appreciate was the sense of world culture that I saw in the paintings. Insights from people from all around the world from all different time periods seemed to ebb out from the art.
What caught my attention, in particular, was a group of small, stone statues roughly the size of my hand. One of the statues was sitting down, another was carrying a pot, and a third was standing unclothed. The statues were estimated to have been created between 200-900 AD.
The interesting thing (at least to me) about these statues is that these are probably all we have left of the specific people who made them.
Their entire legacy, everything they are remembered by, is based around a small, stone statue. I can pretty much guarantee that the creators of the statues didn’t plan on having them in a museum over a thousand years later, but there they are.
The creators were probably just going about their normal, everyday lives without any great expectations, but through their lives they created things that would last and be appreciated by future generations long after they were gone.
Stephen, a man mentioned in the book of Acts, comes to mind. Stephen was an ordinary man hired by the early Church in Acts to help serve food to widows.
It was in this context of ordinary life that the extraordinary came about. As Stephen faithfully served, God used him to perform miracles among the people. The Jewish leaders didn’t like what he was doing and he was convicted as worthy of death in an unfair trial.
Stephen’s death was tragic and unjust, but it sparked the massive spread of Christianity across the world that still remains today!
Stephen faithfully lived ordinary life. He probably didn’t expect to have his ordinary service change the global world radically over the next 2000 years! Just like the creators of the stone statues, Stephen's life has enormous and eternal impact.
It's so easy to always look at the big moments and events in life, always waiting for the next one to come. In reality, however, the biggest and most impacting things may really be the ordinary, faithful things we do every day.
I encourage you to take this day and make the most out of every moment you get!
Statues that will last thousands of years are made in the every-day ordinariness of life.
Stop waiting for the next big missions trip, speaker, relationship, or job opportunity.
Start building your statue right where God has put you today!
Thank you for this encouraging word, David. The longer I live, the more I realize everyday must be treated preciously. I don't want any hour, minute, second to be wasted. I make impressions in my "hello," the quiet prayer, the heartfelt song, the dishes done, the child bathed, the paper graded--all the activities of my life. When the day is done, I hope the Father and I can look back and see impressions of integrity, of purity.
ReplyDeleteHow true that these ancient artists probably did not realize someone today would be observing and writing about their art. They did not know they were creating something that would become content for a blog. This evening I was just telling my husband of someone who probably does not realize the effect he has had on my life. He has a lot he could complain about, but he bears the heaviness of life with a gentle cheerfulness so that I am uplifted whenever I am around him. He has no idea how his response to life has ministered to me.
Your final image will stay in my imagination; I hope I've built a statue today.