Saturday, December 25, 2010

plain scenes (Christmas).

Saturday December 18th was Antioch’s (my church) Christmas Show and it was phenomenal! The evening started with an hour of free desserts, chatting, and fair trade Christmas shopping. The lights dimmed at eight and the show started. Beautiful solo carols were sung, poetry was read, break dancers wowed the audience with their flips, worship was beautiful, and as the night was coming to an end a ballet was performed with a perfect 4 year old angel (Collette Curry) that stole the show.
There was also a live painter, Ashley Setzler, at the front of the stage all night. Her painting was displayed the next morning at Sunday service as well and as I worshipped, the Lord really brought it to my attention. At first glance it is a rather plain scene, a bare lamp stand, a light bulb with no shade illuminating a shabby brick wall covered in moss. But if you look long enough you realize that the orb of light coming off the bulb forms an ocean blue circle. That is at least interesting…brick isn’t usually blue. Then the moss begins to look too calculated, not just random splotches but perhaps something more intentional. And then the entire message of the painting becomes clear. Here is this rather ordinary looking site that upon closer inspection is actually setting the entire world alight.
            This really ministered to me. So many days feel so ordinary in life. Wake up, go to school or work, take out the trash, worry about spending too much money on Starbucks, make dinner, try and go out every once in awhile, get some sleep, do it again. I sometimes forget that I have the living God inside of me, the same power that rose Christ from the dead, that my Savior came to give me abundant life! Looking at this picture I felt challenged to let God use what I consider to be my very ordinary life to do unfathomable things. I felt challenged to take more risks for the Kingdom, to ask God for more divine appointments in my life, to use me to love a very dark world. In the midst of very ordinary moments God can use us to illuminate the world. When things feel cold, damp, dark, and moldy God surprises us with beautiful miracles that seem to come out of nowhere.
            Is this not the first Christmas story? A dark night, a young girl everybody thought was a tramp, no place in the hotels or motels, a baby being born in the coldest most unglamorous place imaginable…and then God did it. Lit the world on fire with the glorious miracle of his perfect son.