God's Beauty

I've been getting a lot out of this book by Calvin Miller. He really has a beautiful writing style. Here are the most recent things I've been chewing on....

• God lives freest in those whose eyes are snagged by His artistry. Creativity is one way we respond...
• But some evangelicals have become junk dealers, substituting art for trinkets of our "sloganeered faith."
• There are many ways to glorify God, yet "Jesus junk" bears no glory and indeed is but the tinseled foolishness of evangelicals who have never seen the Lord high and lifted up. YOWZA!!!
• Some sermons and sanctuaries have been void of both art and interest. Our chatty religious spewings have become an idolatry of froth.
• Art is praise - high praise - and comes in all degrees of excellence. When Jesus touched Handel, he wrote "The Messiah." Handel yearned not only to praise Christ but to do so from the highest pinnacle of human genius.
• Making Christ in our image avoids the painful work of being conformed to His.
• Golden calves are the glitzy work of those Aarons who have not traversed the upper slopes of Sinai. Those who have, meet that God who is the only food that can appease their hunger.
• Too many churches are community centers and too little are conservatories.
• Too often we are the bland who no longer cry out to make God beautiful.

I know some of these quotes are tough, but I think we need to shake ourselves occasionally and ask (as David Powlison put it...) "Has something or someone besides Jesus Christ taken title to my heart's functional trust, preoccupation, loyalty, service, fear and delight?"

Romans 12:2, (The Message), "Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what He wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you."

Philippians 2:13, (New Living Translation) "For God is working in you, giving you the desire to obey Him and the power to do what pleases Him."