The Great Artist

Everything the Lord creates is beautiful beyond description! After all, He is in fact the first one to create anything. All pieces of art that His hands have ever made are unique and magnificent in their own way. Some of His works are perfectly structured and functionally sound in their beauty and some are diversely abstract and aesthetically pleasing to the eye in theirs. But all the same, they each reflect the splendor of His glory and endless imagination in their desired manner. Everything He has fashioned is gorgeous beyond our mind’s simple comprehension! Everything! He is unmatched in all creative ability and has claimed since the beginning the title of The Great Artist!

So let’s take a look at all the examples we can find around us and recorded for us…

First off we obviously have Creation itself. I mean, I don’t really need to go any further on that one to be honest. But I can, so I will! Everything about this universe He has made is mind-blowingly magnificent, from the multi-colored orbs and flurries we call planets and galaxies and the like to the tiniest precise details of say an eye or a snowflake. It all works together in perfect harmony in one massive, cohesive piece of art! Truly the first piece of art in this entire reality! Look at the trees, look at the mountains, look at the sky, look at all its creatures, look at you and I.. Each object is one of His many beautiful works!

There are no amount of measly words I could share here with you that would sum it all up, and neither could you. So just open your eyes and look at it all! Seek and enjoy all that He has put together! What else can we want? What else do we need?! We are all art among the rest of His art! There is so much to see, experience, and learn from all He has crafted from His paintings to His pottery, from His stone-work to His wood-work, from His fabrications to His architecture! The creation is both meant to be enjoyable and inspiring. We get to admire His work and follow suit by making our own, whatever that may be! Yeah I’m not gonna lie, said a lot more there than I planned to, but hey that’s how awesome of an artist He is!

Next let’s rewind for a second and remember that He created the Heavens and His angels as well. And they are such beautiful and pure pieces of art that the writers of the Bible couldn’t hardly describe them at all! Some, while recording their visions, made it clear anything they said to tell of Heaven would fall embarrassingly short of it’s true exquisiteness. Also, the only thing that is ever made clear about angels is that they shine so bright and gleam with such majesty that all men fall in awe, despite the fact that they are not God. Find some of the passages where the angels are depicted, especially the ones about Lucifer, yep he was actually the most beautiful one around, and you’ll get the picture!

Then there’s all the designs God laid out for Noah’s Ark in Genesis 6. There we see only a few verses about the broad design but it is clear that God provides him with even more detailed personal instruction on it. It was God’s design that He employed Noah to build. And this massive functioning ship was not only a seafaring vessel, but a piece of wooden art! There’s no way around that.

Now turn your attention to God’s design for His dwelling place, the Tabernacle, during the Hebrew wandering found in Exodus 25-28. These chapters lay out such precise, complex instructions for the project’s entirety, proving His care for detail, that He is certainly the most experienced architect AND talented interior decorator in all the universe. When you go through all the materials God chose for the Israelites to use in making this movable dwelling place the beauty of it is all but physically visible to us, consisting of fine gems, colorful fabrics, fashionable wood, and even gold! It is clear to see that our Lord has an eye for what is artful and excellent, making all He designs magnificent inside and out! The more I read, the more obvious it becomes that God’s ability stretches across every artistic discipline.. from builder to weaver and everything in between. He’s even the top fashion designer in His own right! He knew what to do and just how to do it when it came to the clothing of the priesthood, and as goofy as some of it seems to us the designs really are quite gorgeous.

And when you go on to chapter 30 He even shows off the art of a perfumer with the scents and oils He tells them to make for what goes on within. Plus each specific piece of art included in His instructions serve a symbolic function of the Lord and His Kingdom, which is pretty cool considering the message is always as important as the art itself! God then goes on in chapters 31 and 36-40 to employ the ones He had gifted with artistic ability, wisdom, and craftsmanship to complete His grand design, with Bezalel and Aholiab in charge as the chief artists. They obey the call and fabricate everything exactly as God commanded, a picture of God’s choice to partner with us and use us for His glory if we’re willing! Much of the exact same artistic process went on in the building of the permanent Temple in Jerusalem with David compiling all the necessary materials for the project in 1 Chronicles 22 and Solomon receiving all the instructions and completing it in 1 Kings 5-7/2 Chronicles 2-7 with Huram-abi as the lead artist… Only this time it was even more extravagant and intricate because of its permanency and the great resources Solomon was blessed with.

I think those examples cover as much as I’m able to for this post, obviously there’s so much more that could be said about God’s creativity though. But I wanna focus for a second on the fact that men were employed by God to be partner artists in many of His works. Isn’t that exciting to know?! He literally imparted a level of His own creative ability and nature to each and every one of us! Because of that we are free to fashion art just like He has done; And better yet we can do it with His direction and for His glory if we so choose to! That’s what He wants from us! That’s what He created us for! I don’t know about you, but I think we ought to take advantage of that and go out creating in His name! I have so many friends that follow after the Lord Jesus that do just that and in their pieces of art I can see God at work just as much as in anything else! Whether your art is in painting, architecture, decorating, fashion designing, or whatever else, you can use it for the bigger picture of His Kingdom!

So there you have it; God is in fact The Great Artist!