“Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Behold, I have chosen Bezalel son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with wisdom, with understanding, with knowledge and with all kinds of skills -- to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver and bronze, to cut and set stones, to work in wood, and to engage in all kinds of crafts.’” (Exodus 31:1-5)
To behold is to see beyond sight. I think of beholding as a participation in divine perceptivity. God creates, and God beholds. As divine image-bearers, we do the same. It's what we were made for.
This is precisely what artists do. Artists have a sense of vision beyond eyesight. They see what can't be seen, and they bring it into visibility through acts of creation so we can see it too. They behold, and in creating something for us to see, they train us to behold -- to see beyond our limited sight.
Behold -- the first art project in the kingdom of God is an installation of creativity that will point us not to the artist, nor to the art, but to God Himself. This is the divine calling of a holy artist -- to forge and fashion the vision of "on earth as it is in heaven" through every medium imaginable by all manner of creative work. I think I may have stumbled onto a definition of worship from the back side.
What if all work were approached in this same way? When work is done as worship -- which is to say, from a place of beholding -- it causes all work to rise to the level of art. It becomes a thing to "behold," which points us to the God of glory. There is a word for this kind of awakening: renaissance.
-- Excerpted
from “Wake-Up Call” with J. D. Walt
#6175
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