In this season of healing, I have reached out to just about anything to close the gaping wound in my heart. Some things I have reached for were distractions or band-aids that just kept me from looking at the hole. Other things have worked like sutures and suave.
Several months ago this little upstart podcast was recommended by a friend. I started listening and joined the online community because I thought it would help me minister to others. Turns out it was so they could minister to me.
Spencer Owen and his Trauma-Informed Church Kid pod cast has provided some real truth that I needed shouted at me in my bathroom. Things like:
- Creation is good.
- God loves me.
- I am an image-bearer of God.
- God likes me.
- God is always reaching out his hand.
And, this world dishes out a lot of ugly stuff. We must experience a beauty greater than the ugly to find wholeness. The healing we need starts with a beautiful experience with God- a theophany.
Dr. Timothy G. Patitsas, in his book Ethics of Beauty, says, “The initial focus of soul-healing must be on Beauty rather than truth, on a living vision of a loving and crucified God, rather than the autopsy of the broken self.” (You can listen to Spencer’s interview with Dr. Patitsas here.)
I spent a lot of time in the autopsy room. It was time to get the smell of death out of my nose and smell and taste the goodness of a magnificently loving, all-powerful, death-defeating, healing God.
Taste and see that the LORD is good. Psalm 34:8
Let’s weave another thread into the tapestry of healing. God used another friend to say, “Run don’t walk to get this book.”
God Speaks Through Wombs: Poems on God’s Unexpecting Coming by Drew Jackson
I was sitting at a manicure table in my salon when I opened it for the first time. The busyness of the day had not yet arrived. It was quiet. I absorbed the words. I wept.
But God speaks through wombs,
birthing prophetic utterances. . . .
Enough of this unbelieving religion
that masquerades as faith.
Divine favor is placed on what we
have disgraced.
Like the Psalms to the Torah, Jackson penned a poetic conversation with the Book of Luke.
Poetry. Beauty. God.
This is about the time I had my daughters in Bible class. I thought, if this is my last thing I teach them, what’s one thing I want them to know.
- Satan hates their feminine beauty.
- He will attack them just like he did Eve and Mary (Rev. 12)
- As a image-bearer of God, you bring Beauty to the world.
And so, we started a journey together, experiencing Beauty and experiencing God- through art.
Painting. Drawing. Song.
My art form: words.
