‘The Word Became Flesh’
In the words of Donald McGilchrist…
Never was the apostle John more inspired than when he penned this astonishing statement: ‘the Word became flesh’. Redemption infused a fallen creation.
Making art is hardly easy. We struggle to express truth among the ruins of our culture, to bring beauty into disordered lives. Sometimes, circumstances just roll over us, flattening our creative energies.
What can we do? Much, because the Word became flesh.
At the beginning, our Triune God had worked with such joy and wisdom that his material world was drenched with goodness. Unalloyed goodness. Indeed, we were the pinnacle of his workmanship. But, we crashed…and shattered the relational intimacy for which he had designed us.
End of story? No, there is hope, because the Word became flesh. God’s goodness has graced us. In Jesus, he has freshly dignified our bodies and lifted up the material world. Brian Wren captures the outcome:
Good is the body for knowing the world,
sensing the sunlight, the tug of the ground,
feeling, perceiving, within and around,
Good is the body, from cradle to grave,
Good is the flesh that the Word has become.
The Word became flesh. Language became life. The unfathomable voice of our holy God became his healing, caressing touch, in Jesus. The material matters! Now, we can know that nothing we do need be insignificant, provided it is crafted before the face of God, shaped in the light of his presence.
Pastries, poems, packaging, payment systems…all that we create can, indeed should, express a loving obedience to our God who designed us to do good work, including good art!
“For we are God’s works of art, created in Christ Jesus to do good work which God prepared in advance for us to doâ€â€”Ephesians 2:10.
June 2nd, 2007 at 8:37 am
What a powerful statement on the value of our work. Reading thhat poem selection is like reading a treatise on the purpose of life.