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The Sacred Month

The Sacred Month

December is a sacred month for me.

Celebrating Christmas is wonderful, but the sanctity of the month comes from far more than that.

It concludes a year, making me pensive and somewhat nostalgic. Are you the same?

I look back on year lived, reread journal entries, and marvel. God’s presence is evident. His goodness, like irrepressible shafts of light, shone through clouds that sometimes made their way into the year. If I had not journaled, I would never have remembered the highs and lows of the past year. So if you don’t already, I encourage you to do so.

The hurried, brief entries on some days when life was overwhelming, make me regret that I did not capture its colors in greater detail.

“Next year,” I tell myself. “ Next year, I will do better.”

In December I also spend time in prayer asking for wisdom for the year to come. I dread complacency, knowing that it is a real temptation to feel apathetic because of world events and persistent feelings of inadequacy (undoubtedly the universal sentiment of artists everywhere)!

How can anyone make a dent in the tide of world events? I wonder. Christians are being beheaded, tortured and wiped out in large numbers. They are our brothers and sisters. We pray for their families and shudder at the atrocities.

None of this should surprise us very much. The Bible spoke of these times.

So what should my response be? Pray, of course.

Prayer makes a difference in ways that are not always apparent. But surely there is more we could do, more that is expected of us, is there not?

The Bible tells us that serving with excellence, wherever we are planted, with whatever resource we’ve been blessed, in gratitude for the relative peace we enjoy is something that we can, and must, do.

I remind myself that I am not asked to solve the world’s problems, only to work quietly and live my life in submission to God.

1Th 4:11 “And that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you;“

It is heartening to know that we are urged to work with our hands, if our lives are not threatened and we are blessed with peace.

The making of art is not frivolous or unnecessary, despite how it may appear. Our creative work becomes a visual witness to the goodness of God in a broken world.

Our art is our praise, our thanksgiving and our testament, especially when we feel small and unimportant.

The relative peace we enjoy compared to the rest of the world is not to squander, but to witness to the truth by praying and living a fruitful life.

God considers this good.

As this year draws to a close, ask the Father for godly plans for the year to come.

Dream of fruitfulness and set goals.

To do so is not an act of selfishness, but rather a determined attempt to make our lives, and art, count for something.

Have a blessed December!

Blessings for Obedience

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