What Are Your Sincere Acts?

The act of making art is a sincere act in life.  Often our days are filled from one existent act to another all the while time is sweeping life away.  We should all strive to make as much of life with the time we are granted.  Making art is one method, loving, serving and helping are others.  When we are young most art making is a self righteous act but if we preserver and our hearts desire is to know God then He manages to mold our art making into sincere acts of loving Him.  What are your sincere acts?

Part of my piece, "Reliquary To The Word Fly"
clay made with Holy Water, wood, india ink, bird, 24k gold

The Loser Wins or See You At The Back of the Pack

“…let us run with endurance the race that lies before us,”  Hebrews 12:1

The Christian walk (race) is a great paradox.  We are called to be the fastest person in the race so as to win and to win the race we must come in last.  There are several reasons for this paradox.  One of the great roles of a Christian is to continually run ahead to make the path straight, to lower the mountains and raise the valleys so that those who come behind will have an easier path to Christ (Isaiah 40:3-5).  We also continually run back to those slower in the race to run beside them, to encourage them and to let them know what lies ahead on the path we have already trodden and helped to clear.   

 At times God’s love for us is “sweeter than the day before.”

It Is All Training

When I became a father for the first time I suddenly realized I was completely responsible for another human being.  I wrote my dad a letter and asked him for advise on how to discipline.  I wrote the letter with the intention of learning how to punish my child when they had misbehaved.   What my dad wrote back is perhaps the best parenting advise I ever received.  He said that discipline meant to teach.  At that moment I had to decide, did I want to teach my children or punish them?  Teaching is much harder because it requires training.  It seems to me that most of life is training regiments designed by God to teach us.

Watching The Big Bang

I regularly sit in front of a roaring kiln in the dark early morning hours.  I love this about my falls; it is always the same, cold mornings, clothes half buttoned and hat over pillow hair I stumble forth in the cold dark to stoke up the kiln.  I sit beside its warmth and rumble drinking hot coffee and reading with God.  There is sacredness to this, God, fire, air, dirt.  Inside that kiln fire is forcibly redistributing matter from one form to another, a cosmic big bang caged in a steel box in front of me.  Oxides and dirt are melting and mixing with carbon and creating colors that painters couldn’t imagine.  These are some of the most sincere times on earth, times brought to us by God, Maker of fire, air and dirt.   

Where Have We Driven Our Peg?

"In that day," declares the LORD of hosts, "the peg driven in a firm place will give way; it will even break off and fall, and the load hanging on it will be cut off, for the LORD has spoken."  Isaiah 22:25

Election day is always a good day to ask yourself, "Where have I driven my peg?"

Spared

It is difficult to read parts of the Old Testament and see how drastically God deals with people who sin.  Sin must be much more horrible than we have made it out to be.  We live lives of pampered appeasement to sin with seemingly little or no consequences, at least none that match the penalties of the Old Testament.  We all live safely under the sacrifice of Christ and His payment of our penalty.  However when viewed in context of the Old Testament our lives must reflect a greater sense of gratefulness and adoration for a Savior who would spare us from such horrific consequences of our sinful actions.