Look around you. Look out your window. Look at the trees and the flowers. How many different colors do you see? Look at all the leaves and the movement of each blade of grass. How long do you think it would take to count them all? Look at your hands and their every little detail. Open and close them. Watch how they move.
Do you see the amazing creations that are all around us? All of the intricacies. All of the nuances. All that is seemingly beyond our comprehension. It’s no wonder that God designed it all, took a step back, and saw that it was good.
“Even God didn’t say it was perfect, but he also didn’t say it was just okay.”
As an artist and designer at Rosedale Bible College, I often take a step back from my laptop and ask myself that same question. Is my creation good? I mean, it doesn’t have to be perfect, right? Even God didn’t say it was perfect, but he also didn’t say it was just okay.
Much of my inspiration comes from God’s design. I often look at the shapes and the colors of my environment. I ponder how they make me feel. More importantly, I wonder how they make you feel. Even now, I am looking at the fonts on this page and the negative spaces between each letter. I’m carefully selecting words and considering their readability to evoke an emotion in you. There is such power within design, and most of the time we are not even thinking about it.
Recently, as I was reading through Exodus, the process of building the tabernacle stuck out at me. God told Moses that he had chosen skilled artisans and craftsmen, bestowing them with great wisdom and knowledge in artistic designs (Exodus 31:1-5). He filled them with the abilities to craft in a variety of different mediums: metals, woods, stones, and fabric. These were individuals blessed with a specific gift and task from God.
I’d like to think that God has blessed me with similar gifts of wisdom and knowledge in order to produce projects here at RBC. My desire is to create content for the college that moves the kingdom of God forward. Now, I can’t imagine anybody being immediately saved by the proper placement of an RBC logo here and there, but it could be that first visual cue that leads them on the start of that journey. They may not ever pinpoint the roots of their future experiences to my artwork, and I may not ever know who was moved enough by my free t-shirt designs to come to Rosedale. I’m just a single gear in the machine of amazing people that I work together with to hopefully bring people from all over to experience the uniqueness of the college and move the Kingdom forward.
So, take the time today to reflect on the fact that God created each of us with specific skills and abilities that not only make us unique but which can also be used to bring glory to him – as an artist, a craftsman, a musician, a public speaker, a writer. Even if you don’t think it possible, it is! I mean, I never thought much about my art bringing glory to God, but I believe God put me at Rosedale to do just that.
God is looking at how we use our gifts and creations. Hopefully, as he steps back, he is moved to say, “It was good!”
