We all have seeds of faith, and the Holy Spirit waters them

I wrote a fable a few years ago, before I was saved. I was raised in an atheist/lapsed Catholic home where church was not an activity we participated in. However, as a child, then as an adult, I always adhered to the internal feeling I had that there is immutable right and wrong, good and evil, black and white, truth and lies. I was forever getting yelled at. "Stop being so dogmatic!" I was told. "Everything is not black and white! There's gray!" I didn't buy it. Of course, the seed that He planted within me eventually blossomed into salvation. The one Truth is Jesus. There IS black and white. Hallelujah.

I went through some of my artwork from that period and I was struck by how biblical it is. The Spirit must have been working overtime in me. There are biblical allusions, biblical pictures, biblical concepts. I'll share one example, the fable titled "The Shark Tooth and the Rock." [click to enlarge]



















Once upon a time there was a shark. He swam the deep, dark waters endlessly, always hungry. He ate and ate, and preyed and preyed. He was always alone, occasionally cursing his lot of loneliness and predation. His fellow ocean dwellers swam away from him scared of his big teeth and his disturbing power. Eventually, the shark died. Soon the only thing left if this shark was its tooth. In the end, the tooth washed up on the shores of the cold ocean in which he swam. One day a little girl was walking the beach. She saw the darkly polished tooth, and picked it up. As she peeped at it in her palm, she wondered, "Was he happy being a shark?"














Once upon a time, there was a rock. He was a big rock, sturdy and strong. He lived through ages and ages and eons and epochs as a well-loved rock. As each age passed, he tumbled the warm waters of the ocean floor with his fellow rocks. Tumbling happily along, now and then he did good work like holding up buildings or making a beach. The eons of tumbling polished him to an even rounder and more pleasing proportion. As he tumbled down from his great size his inner gem-like qualities shone through and he sparkled. One day a little girl was walking the beach and she saw the splendor in this rock. She picked it up and held it warm in her hand. As she gazed at it in her palm, she marveled, "I love this rock."







"Free will means being able to choose the most loving way to be."




I leave it to you to determine the biblical allusions. For me it seems that in my little fable there is a predator endlessly going to and fro seeking whom he may devour; in the end he perished, the cover's 'city on a hill'; the stone's refinement by tumbling in the 'waters' until its inner qualities show; Light; and free will's goal, choosing Love.

All this to say, that the Holy Spirit has an amazing ministry on earth for each and every person on it. Saved or unsaved. What I was doing at that period in my life was create artist books and stories without limits and that allowed the Holy Spirit enough room to work in me. My soul knew that there existed an absolute: absolute truth, justice, right and wrong. My soul knew it. I would not let the world take that little seed of faith out of my hand. Finally, when the Spirit deemed the time was right, it grew. If you feel that things should be 'right' but they aren't, if you feel something is missing from your heart, or that things seem just a little empty and pointless, it is the Spirit talking to you. He is knocking at the door to your heart. He is the living waters that will grow that seed of faith. Will you let Him in?
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art notes: paste paper, suminagashi, artisan paper, artist books, real shark tooth scanned, real rock scanned then photoshopped with lens flare.

The Hubble Deep Field: The Most Important Image Ever Taken

I was sifting through photos last night in a project I am doing. I came across an old travel journal I kept from my first overseas journey (thanks mom and dad!). My High School graduation present was a trip to London with my classmates, and it was also my first plane ride. I was 17 and this was 31 years ago.

I grew up in a fairly secular home and I had no formal or consistent training or exposure to God. People often ask me, now that I am a Christian, "What about the people who have never heard about Jesus? Isn't it vindictive for God to judge them?" There are many answers to that, but the answer I want to focus on involves God's creation and the scripture following:

Romans 1:20: "For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities; his eternal power and divine nature; have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse."

I wrote a series of essays at The End Time called "Consider Beauty" which deals with people who has open eyes and an open heart can find God in the creation He made, because His glory is not only in the Son as written in the Scriptures. God reveals His glory in the world and in the heavens, too. So in this travel journal I discovered last night in my photos bin, I had written:

"Plane, 2:00 am. Sunrise...beautiful. I'm watching one side of the world wake up while the other side is still sleeping. It is all pink and blue, and the clouds are like cotton. The stewardess just asked us to lower our shades, because the sun will be up soon and some would like to sleep. I'm not going to miss this for all the gold on earth! This is God's handiwork. I'm not turning down an offering from God."

Later: "I've decided this is heaven. When I die, I want to spend eternity here. Nothing but God could have made this. This is another world."

The bible says that the Holy Spirit draws a person before they even understand the Word. "No man can come to Me, except the Father which hath sent Me draw him; and I will raise him up at the last day" (John 6:44). Rev. Stanley L. Derickson said, "Since God revealed Himself to man in the creation and man is held accountable for that revelation, then there must be some possibility of the man responding to that creation, else God is holding him responsible for something which he cannot act upon." source. God's general revelation of Himself in the heavens and in the world communicates enough truth about God to make a man responsible to seek God further, with the goal hopefully ending in salvation.

James 4:8 "Draw near to God and he will draw near to you." Do you see God in this short video? It is astounding to see God's handiwork through the perspective of deep space peeks from Hubble. I don't agree with the narrator when he says that it's almost absurd that upon seeing this picture that we are alone in the universe." But I do pray that if you glimpse God's glory in the heavens or here on earth that you will allow the Holy Spirit to draw you ever closer to God and your own eternity with Him.

There's seeing...and there's seeing

When I was undergoing a spiritually difficult time, I used to make art journal pages. Somehow my brain unlocked from its death grip on words, and went into neutral as soon as I dragged out the glue and paint. I'd coast along, and the spiritual center of me could impress itself on the action and I'd emerge from my creative haze with a visual piece that made sense. If you didn't try to describe it with words, that is.

As time went on after I accepted Jesus as my Savior, I began studying the bible and getting closer to Jesus. More and more it became apparent that many of the original collages I made were inspired by the Holy Spirit. They were scenes from the bible, or related to scriptures. Some of these were the visions I've already posted. Upon awakening I'd create a picture of what I had been shown and there they were, years later, for me to see again with new, spiritually opened eyes.

Last night I was reading John 9. I had read it a few days ago and so when I prayed for discernment and the word came back, "John 9" I was perplexed. But far be it for me to argue.

I read along and got toward the end. John is always great to read anyway. Jesus healed a blind man, and the Pharisees were bent out of shape, denying Jesus had done it, threatening to excommunicate the man, grilling him over the fact that it was Sabbath and Jesus thereby must be a law-breaker...

Jesus came on the scene and told the Pharisees: " 39Jesus said, "For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind."

I stopped short. Suddenly one of the collages I had made 4 years ago came to mind clear as day. I was always quite fond of it. It depicted a man looking out through powerful binoculars, but the birds he is looking for are sitting right on top of the binoculars. He doesn't see them. Caption is "Sometimes we look but we can't see." The second scene shows Angel Gabriel appearing before Mary. "Sometimes we see but we can't look."

The third part shows God in His universe, the looking and the seeing finally united in the comfort of His glory.

This is John 9:39. Mary is blind but then sees and the Pharisees are seeing but are blind to the Messiah standing in front of them.

Which are you? So you see so well you see right past the Messiah who came to save you? I'm glad I am seeing. And seeing is believing.

Christianity in these end times

I always wondered about people who were so sure Jesus was the only way to heaven. I used to think those people were arrogant, misguided wack-jobs who had nothing better to do than read their bibles and go to church.

Now I'm one of them. In the past, when I've observed the process from afar of gradual conversion of an individual, I used to think that they had been indoctrinated, sucked in, absorbed.

Now I understand.

When a person accepts Christ, in the manner outlined in Romans 10:9 "If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved" then what you are doing is agreeing that God in His supernatural, unknowable sovereignty raised His son from the dead. The word 'Lord' means you understand that you are a subject under that sovereignty and will follow His teachings and Law. The Holy Spirit then comes upon you.

The gulf then widens between the believer and the unbeliever, because the Holy Spirit is knowable to the person in whom He dwells, and unknowable to the person in whom He does not dwell. As the new Christian disciple grows in Christ, the Holy Spirit leads them more strongly and more lovingly, and the new believer naturally drifts farther from the paths trod by the unbeliever. The gap widens. Eventually, those left behind will look upon the new Christian as one who has been sucked in, they not being able to see, know, or understand the power of our Lord who now dwells within the follower.

But, O! it is so simple. And in its simplicity, it is so devastating. First, the love bestowed on us by God through His son Jesus Christ is deep and abiding. That the very creator of the worlds would care so much about us, who are ridiculous humans fumbling around the world, is amazing. It is also devastating because the more fervently the Holy Spirit dwells within a person (which in my opinion depends upon how fervently the believer seeks it, asks for it, and obeys it) the more one wants to bring all this amazingness to others.

Who do not always appreciate the message.

So there you have it, the life of a Christian.