northVUs

bombing the church for God's glory?

so i got this call from my friend mikhail, the painter... perhaps you remember- the one who spray-painted graffiti all over the back wall of the church? (http://northvus.blogspot.com/2005/10/was-only-joke.html)

i have thought a lot about that project in the couple months since its completion. wondering why, for example, my friend's work schedule made it impossible for us to be able to publically thank him for his work on our building. i mean, people have come up to me from out of nowhere saying how that mural has arrested their imaginations as they drive by in the mornings on their way to work. others have begun to refer to us as the church with the wall or the church with the graffiti, acknowledging and affirming the artwork (and the church- let's not dumb it down to mere aesthetics) and its place in the beautification and culture of our community. nice. even nicer to pass the glory on...

however, i think that i might have received a deterministic glimpse into how things sometimes work the other day.

his paint posse (strictly legit, they assure me!) is being reunited this week. one of the artists moved to calgary, but is in town for the week and the guys are all about a reunion concert of visual sorts... so they called our church, looking for something to paint.

does that seem weird to you?

it did for me briefly, but i'm learning to just ride the waves rather than analyse them. we talked and mikhail shared his vision: to plan and execute a mural by four painters on the forty-foot wall in our youth zone; and be completed, start to finish, this saturday.

i proceeded with caution:
"sounds amazing, but we aren't able to enter into another fund-raiser for this project, as we are working on a couple of missions projects already. in short, we just don't have the cash."

"no no- we would supply the materials... we just want a place to paint. i will talk to the guys and then present you with sketches- like before."

well, what are you supposed to say to something like this?
i found the right words:
"thank you."

that was one of those loaded statements that had a whole bunch of contextual stuff floating around in it. although i was talking to my friend, i knew God was listening and i was thanking him at the same time: for the gift that was imminent; for the opportunity to work with mikhail again; for the relationship that was now extending into his community of painters... so much thanksgiving.

perhaps having a public curtain call for mikhail would have been closure to a dialogue box that God the Holy Spirit intended to keep open. i don't know. all i know is that the good news of Jesus' message to all of us on earth- that we could be free to be all that we had it in us naturally (before the fall) to be by the grace of God- is now penetrating the network of friends that share a common gift with mikhail. these artists are released to celebrate the glory and diversity of God's creation simply by being given the opportunity to paint a thing of beauty.

i find it really marvelous that there does not necessarily need to be a personal relationship with the creator in order for the creation to celebrate his glory. just as a brightly feathered bird or a rugged mountain range celebrates God's glory simply by existing and doing whatever it does naturally as part of that existence, so do my friends the painters. God is the author of all good things, and this saturday a bunch of painters are going to be spray-painting a wall in our church basement in his honour, just because they need a place to paint and know a church down the street that seems to be into that sort of thing.


that 'mikhail' means gift of God is just some extra context.

posted by jollybeggar @ 12:15 PM