Springs of water

Exodus 13-15

I had the perfect blog for today.  This morning I found the children of Israel leaving for the Promised Land and two of my own children, Zac and Sarah, leaving as well.  Zac to Boulder to pursue his sculpture program and Sarah back to UT.  But it’s become too personal for a public blog so I'll write about something else that has come to mind in today’s reading.

Complete dependence on God.  That’s where we find the children of Israel.   They’ve left Egypt, are in the desert and they don’t even have water to drink.  Complete dependence upon God is nearly impossible today.  I’m too affluent.  Affluence can be a great god.  My cabinets, refrigerator, closets and carport overflow.  My bank account, billfold and retirement funds do the same.  And if my affluent gods give me too much there are ample storage units to come to my rescue. 

In Genesis 15 it says that the children of Israel came to Elim where there were “12 springs of water…”.  If you counted the sources of fresh water coming into my home there are exactly 12.  (good coincidence)  Twelve springs of fresh water.  I one time thought that if I turned one on and left town for a year and came back it would still be running.  Gratitude and thanksgiving should be what really “overflows” in my home. 

Affluence can easily replace God if I am not continually aware of His goodness.  Water is a good example.  No one has a right to water.  Millions of humans will do without today and thousands, around 9000, will actually die of thirst today.  I have a hard time thinking of dying of thirst knowing that I own 12 fresh springs.  But my point is this.  What if God chose to put me in charge of water?  Not to give it to people but to make it.  He took all the water away and then said, “Lee, from now on you get to make all the water on earth.”  You see it wouldn’t be 9000 that that would die but in 4 days all 4.5 billion of us would die.  I couldn’t make a drop.  

Here’s what got me thinking about all of this.  When the children of Israel left Egypt the Bible records that they plundered Egypt of all their gold and silver.  America, I mean Israel (Freudian slip, my bust) had all the affluence in the world but they couldn’t produce one drop of water.  How many fresh springs flow into your home?  We could use a little praise practice and there’s a good reason.

Being passed over

Exodus 9-12

Great Passover story this a.m. 

I love this story because of what it means to me personally.  We all get passed over.  Promotions, raises, not being picked for the team, being a member of the in-group, all of us get passed over now and then.  As an artist hardly a week goes by without a “passing over” arriving in the mail.  Lost this show or that commission.  Getting passed over is not for the thin skinned.  But the exact opposite is true of this original Passover and the one so personal to me.  There was a lot of me that God had to “passover” in order to save me.  I was a lot like the Prodigal Son who “squandered his estate in loose living.” Luke 15.  There was a mountain of “squandering” in my life that God had to passover.  I would imagine, if we were honest, the same could be said of us all.  But the clear sweet fact is that the Passover is personal not universal, so I always see it in light of me.  The good news, so does God.  He solved my Passover dilemma in Romans 5:8, “But God demonstrated His own love towards us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”  You see it is not my sin that compels God but His love.  Yes there was a lot of me to Passover but praise God it doesn't measure up to His love.  I’m Passed Over.  

Skypeing God

Exodus 5-8

The plagues on Egypt

My oldest son in New York has been texting me all through my quiet time. 

The Old Testament sure would have been different with today’s technology.  The plaques would have been crashing hard drives and identity theft and God would have Skyped Moses. 

The thing I love most about modern technology is how easy it is to connect with loved ones.  Loved ones should always stay intimately connected.  I guess that’s why there’s the Bible and prayer.  

I'm Sore

Exodus 1-4

3:7 “…for I (God) am aware of their suffering.”

I am hurting this morning!  I started a new sculpture yesterday and my body is paying for it.  Making large scale sculpture is hard on a 53 year old body.  In one sense pain is really a blessing.  It’s my body’s way of informing me that it’s still alive, albeit sore, and needs attention.  Pain fills me with empathy for my body which moves me to action to care for it.  This same miracle occurs with my heart and soul.  Isn't it wonderful that we are born with the ability to feel not only physical pain but emotional/spiritual pain as well?  Don’t our “hearts” often experience painful suffering over the plights of loved ones?  But what exactly is hurting?  Our spirit?  Our soul?  I'm no theologian so I don’t have a ready answer but the one thing I do know is that I’m happy to have been given such a gift.  Why?  Because, just like making sculpture moves me to the rubbing alcohol bottle, this more meaningful pain of my spirit moves me to reach out and offer aid and comfort to others. 

What got me to thinking about this is the short phrase quoted above.  Moses is being called to go get the children of Israel out of Egypt and we are given the text of the conversation between God and him.  God tells Moses, “for I am aware of their suffering.”  You see we are the created physical manifestation of God ‘in His image.’  When we hurt and suffer God is empathetically aware of it.  Just like sitting in this recliner right now my body is making me empathetically aware of its plight.  So the next time you have used your physical body to the point of soreness or your heart is being ripped asunder by a wayward child, or your son is about to move, alone, half way across the country be of a thankful heart.  In some great mysterious way our suffering is being directly felt by God.  God is love!!!  And God is always moved to action by that love for his sore and hurting children.  Now that’s a great truth on pain worthy of praise.   

my studio

My studio

Me in Amber

Just finished Genesis this a.m. and the end of the lives of two great men, Israel and Joseph.  Both die.  We all are appointed to die.  Great mystery death.  As an artist I find myself contemplating death a lot.  Not mine but death in general.  My latest body of work deals with mortality and immortality.  I take 10,000 samples of my DNA on toothpicks, q-tips etc. and imbed them in amber and encase the whole thing in resin.  By doing this I am preserving myself with the idea being that at some point technology will advance to the point that I can be “reborn”, ie: “Jurassic Park”.  The concept for the work is how humans are consumed with their own immortality.  We diet, exercise, use vast amounts of cosmetics and ingest mountains of vitamins, minerals and prescription drugs, all on the premise that we might cheat death, if not forever, at least for a few years.  We don’t like to think about death so we have become enamored with life.  With all this effort to achieve immortality I thought it would be good to do work about it.  To draw attention to a truth about life and death.  

Here are two truths I believe most relevant.  One, everyone’s physical body will die.  Let’s be straightforward.  Joseph was embalmed.  Why?  Because, if left alone after death he as well as us all would just rot.  Our bodies would bloat, burst open and smell, to quote my Granny, “To high heaven.”  If left completely alone animals and insects would consume what was once our cherished selves but would now be a carcass.  Enough of the blunt. 

The second great truth, I believe, is that we are all very truly immortal.  What makes me me and you you lives forever.  Our physical bodies are just the vehicles by which our real selves, our sprit and soul, get hauled around. Our physical bodies give us the ability to be animated on this earth.  I believe that every human from the moment the egg is fertilized, at that exact instant, becomes immortal. That is why I make the work shown here.  To draw our attention to our own immortality.  How do we spend our immortality?  I believe what Christ taught, that we will spend eternity in one of two ways, with God or without Him.  This belief is exactly why I make the art I make and why I write this blog.  To express this hope.  The hope that I have only found in Christ.  I was reminded of this fact this morning when I read in Genesis 49:33 about the death of another physical body, Jacob.  It said “he drew his feet into the bed and breathed his last and was gathered to his people”.  The “gathered to his people” part was what I was drawn to.  I believe he truly was gathered up to be together with all his loved ones who had made a conscious decision to believe and to live there with them and God forever.  Now that’s what I call the good news, news worthy of making art about “until the cows (or in this case, the Lee’s) come home.”

"Me in Amber" 10,000 q tips embedded in amber
encased in resin, 4'/1'/8"

On lee's knees

It has dawned a beautiful clear cold morning.  Just finished the Joseph story in Genesis.  What a compelling narrative.  Attempted murder, slavery, false rape charges, hopelessness and then a great renewal and redemption over the plight of the earth.  All this occurring in one family.  It is the story of all families.  We all have great tragedies, sorrows and troubles nesting in our family trees.  Our tree lineages are darkened by all manner of misfits and malcontents.  I know there are many broken, splintered and diseased limbs in my tree.  Grandfathers drinking away fortunes, great uncles still tarrying in far off lands for minor crimes committed years ago and wives’ and mother’ hearts crushed by divorce, drug abuse and death.  But we do not despair, such are all family trees.  But think of the great branches, those tightly engrained into the trunk that is growing ever deeper into the good earth of God’s Heart.  Those ancestors of lore like Abraham, Isaac and Jacob or in my case Wayne Lee or Nellie Kimbraugh.  My great branches support limbs like me who, by grace, have grown branches like Aaron and Sissy who have now sprouted Reese, Cora and Knox Lee twigs. 

In my front yard lays a great limb dropped in yesterday’s strong winds.  It had died long ago and had finally fallen when the elements had long beared up against it.  And such is family life.  But the good news, it fell from a great tulip popular still standing strong and steady, waiting out the cold of winter to beautifully bloom in the spring.  Shall this be you?  Yes, we only have to continue to sink our roots into the good richness of God’s Heart, the sweet and life giving, nutrient rich Heart.  Just like Joseph. Don’t you just love family, And God!!!

On lee's knees

1-1-2012

“Sunday Morning Coming Down”

Good morning God.  We are grateful to spend our first few minutes with You on this New Years day.  The readings, Genesis 32-35, were about a very troubled family whose faults are all too clear.  Why would You, when documenting Your people, place in writing a record of sex, lies, killing, rape, deceit, bickering, and conniving?  So much about You startles me!  All of humanity is flawed from beginning to today and You faithfully have it recorded.  Why?   Maybe because we are all the same.  From Lady Gaga to Billy Graham we are all struggling with this bittersweet dilemma of being human.  We all believe ourselves to be relevant, (Damien Hurst’s, “The Improbability of Death to the Living”) and so we sat about trying to convince ourselves, and all those who will watch, that we are.  Some of us, like the Children of Israel and the two mentioned above, get our lives documented, most “live lives of quiet” attempts.  All along the way You are there, gently but with loving exuberance, urging us to submit our humanity to Your care and leadership.  Some do, like Pastor Graham, and live a life of humble good doing.  Others, like Lady Gaga, struggle to know who they really are.  And then there are the rest of us who live somewhere in between.

Can You suffer a prayer for all of humanity?  May we all grow closer to You or meet someone who will willingly guide us closer to You.  And Father, allow me and mine to be guides.