Full of splendor and majesty is His work, and His righteousness endures forever. He has caused His wondrous works to be remembered. The Lord is gracious and merciful. He provides food for those who fear Him. He remembers His covenant forever. He has shown His people the power of His works in giving them the inheritance of the nations. The works of His hands are faithful and just. All His precepts are trustworthy. They are established forever and ever, to be performed with faithfulness and uprightness. (Verses 3-8)
Hildebrand Gurlitt was a curator and art dealer when Hitler rose to power in the days before the second world war. Hired by Goebbels to rid museums of what Hitler declared to be "degenerate" art, Mr. Gurlitt hid many of the works of art by major artists like Picasso and Matisse. In the past few months it has been discovered that his son, Cornelius Gurlitt has been in possession of the artwork since the end of the war. Its worth. Over two billion dollars. Over the years the younger Gurlitt would sell a painting in order to make a living. The cache of paintings were stored in his trash filled home. Great worth in nugatory surroundings. Their splendor hidden for years until happened upon in the house of an ordinary eighty-year-old man. Masterpieces forgotten in the press of day-to-day.
I look at a masterpiece of God every single day. The ocean. How is glistens in the morning dawn, silver then pink then sparkling blue. The peachy-orange it turns as the sun goes slowly down in the evening. Dolphins rolling in the waves close to shore. Sea gulls squawking against a bright blue sky and sandpipers running along the shoreline pecking for sand crabs. A painting that can't be hidden. A wonder that will never be found in the trash of someone's closet. Too unfathomably large a canvas to be obscured. And I applaud. Every time. Always to my mind comes the song, "For the beauty of the earth, for the glory of the skies, for the love which from our birth, over and around us lies, Lord of all, to Thee we raise, this our hymn of grateful praise." Why then is He not recognized as the master Creator He is? Who can miss the spectacle of His works. Mountains, streams, valleys, mesas--the stuff of lesser artists' renderings. Only a copy, a very small snapshot of the bigger vista that no one painting could capture. A lone tree, perhaps. The snowy peak of a mountain viewed from a distance. God is the Master Painter Whose brush strokes often bring us to our knees in awe. We can only duplicate it. We cannot create it, too. So how is it He is not acknowledged as the Wonder He is?
It is in discovering the Artist that we often appreciate His works. I've spent my fair share of time roaming through famous and not so famous art museums discovering which works mesmerize me and which artists are not to my taste. But what I always acknowledge is they have a gift I don't possess. A passion for their subjects--a need to create on canvas. Why are we built like that? Where does our joy in beauty come from? Dogs don't paint. Horses don't recite poetry. Hogs don't look at the moon and wonder at its beauty. People do. Created in the image of God, we know what He knows, intrinsically. It was all made for us to enjoy. It's way too ordered and magnificent to have been accidental. We'd never say that about a Matisse or a Picasso. They had something in mind when they painted. An idea. A landscape. A story. Just as what they paint is a copy of the broader landscape created by God, so is their desire to express the beauty and share it. And the more admiration we have for the artwork, the more we want to know about the artist. What makes her tick? Where does her inspiration come from? Why does she love to paint?
And if the wonders of this world are the canvas of its Creator, made for us to marvel at in the museum that is Earth, we can be connected to Him and His art. God wants to tell us why He paints. What's was on His mind when He thought up the butterfly. The only creature that completely transforms from one thing (caterpillar) to a wholly other thing in its cocoon. Like going in a tricycle and coming out an airplane. Was it to transfix us? To ask, "How did You do that?" Most of the time, we just look at butterflies and say, "How pretty." But that is simply one masterpiece we should be in awe of every second of every day. Ordinary, really. There is so much artwork, breathtaking artwork, just on my back porch. Hummingbirds, camellias, cactus, spiders that somehow make a web from tree to tree. I believe it takes way more faith to believe they just came to pass over millions of years than to believe an awesome mind conceived the cricket and held it in His hand to admire it as He set it onto Earth. When man was given the task of naming elephants or rhinos, I think the God Who walked with him in the garden chuckled. Wonder what the man will come up with for that one! It takes more faith to believe that the hues and textures of the varied landscapes of our world were simply an accident of evolution than that One with an eye for balance and composition wanted us to applaud oases and rain forests, tide pools and fir covered slopes, vast deserts and vaster seas--nothing boring and mundane. Lest we make it so.
So maybe it's the very thought that to admire the masterpiece means to understand there is One Who conceived it in the first place. And if we acknowledge that it is painted for us to stand in awe of and wonder at the artist, we must acknowledge the artist Himself. We would find that He is not only a brilliant designer, but that God is a faithful Lover, a righteous Judge, a generous Provider, a merciful Father and a keeper of covenant promises. God is a Personality. To be reckoned with. And the works of art in which we daily live are to remind us as we hear sea gulls call or see the stars twinkling their own specific glory in the skies at night that God is alive and intricately connected to and well acquainted with all of His creation. Every brush stroke. Every curve, height, depth and contour. Just like Monet or de la Tour. He is not like them. They are like Him. And if God's great works are hidden, it's because we don't want to see. Unlike Gurlitt who knew their worth, when we ignore the art that so decorates our world, we do so in order to ignore the Artist, and deny His value.
Oh, Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth! You have set Your glory above the heavens...When I look at the heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars You have set in place, what is man that You think about him?...... Psalm 8 (italics, mine)T
Hildebrand Gurlitt was a curator and art dealer when Hitler rose to power in the days before the second world war. Hired by Goebbels to rid museums of what Hitler declared to be "degenerate" art, Mr. Gurlitt hid many of the works of art by major artists like Picasso and Matisse. In the past few months it has been discovered that his son, Cornelius Gurlitt has been in possession of the artwork since the end of the war. Its worth. Over two billion dollars. Over the years the younger Gurlitt would sell a painting in order to make a living. The cache of paintings were stored in his trash filled home. Great worth in nugatory surroundings. Their splendor hidden for years until happened upon in the house of an ordinary eighty-year-old man. Masterpieces forgotten in the press of day-to-day.
I look at a masterpiece of God every single day. The ocean. How is glistens in the morning dawn, silver then pink then sparkling blue. The peachy-orange it turns as the sun goes slowly down in the evening. Dolphins rolling in the waves close to shore. Sea gulls squawking against a bright blue sky and sandpipers running along the shoreline pecking for sand crabs. A painting that can't be hidden. A wonder that will never be found in the trash of someone's closet. Too unfathomably large a canvas to be obscured. And I applaud. Every time. Always to my mind comes the song, "For the beauty of the earth, for the glory of the skies, for the love which from our birth, over and around us lies, Lord of all, to Thee we raise, this our hymn of grateful praise." Why then is He not recognized as the master Creator He is? Who can miss the spectacle of His works. Mountains, streams, valleys, mesas--the stuff of lesser artists' renderings. Only a copy, a very small snapshot of the bigger vista that no one painting could capture. A lone tree, perhaps. The snowy peak of a mountain viewed from a distance. God is the Master Painter Whose brush strokes often bring us to our knees in awe. We can only duplicate it. We cannot create it, too. So how is it He is not acknowledged as the Wonder He is?
It is in discovering the Artist that we often appreciate His works. I've spent my fair share of time roaming through famous and not so famous art museums discovering which works mesmerize me and which artists are not to my taste. But what I always acknowledge is they have a gift I don't possess. A passion for their subjects--a need to create on canvas. Why are we built like that? Where does our joy in beauty come from? Dogs don't paint. Horses don't recite poetry. Hogs don't look at the moon and wonder at its beauty. People do. Created in the image of God, we know what He knows, intrinsically. It was all made for us to enjoy. It's way too ordered and magnificent to have been accidental. We'd never say that about a Matisse or a Picasso. They had something in mind when they painted. An idea. A landscape. A story. Just as what they paint is a copy of the broader landscape created by God, so is their desire to express the beauty and share it. And the more admiration we have for the artwork, the more we want to know about the artist. What makes her tick? Where does her inspiration come from? Why does she love to paint?
And if the wonders of this world are the canvas of its Creator, made for us to marvel at in the museum that is Earth, we can be connected to Him and His art. God wants to tell us why He paints. What's was on His mind when He thought up the butterfly. The only creature that completely transforms from one thing (caterpillar) to a wholly other thing in its cocoon. Like going in a tricycle and coming out an airplane. Was it to transfix us? To ask, "How did You do that?" Most of the time, we just look at butterflies and say, "How pretty." But that is simply one masterpiece we should be in awe of every second of every day. Ordinary, really. There is so much artwork, breathtaking artwork, just on my back porch. Hummingbirds, camellias, cactus, spiders that somehow make a web from tree to tree. I believe it takes way more faith to believe they just came to pass over millions of years than to believe an awesome mind conceived the cricket and held it in His hand to admire it as He set it onto Earth. When man was given the task of naming elephants or rhinos, I think the God Who walked with him in the garden chuckled. Wonder what the man will come up with for that one! It takes more faith to believe that the hues and textures of the varied landscapes of our world were simply an accident of evolution than that One with an eye for balance and composition wanted us to applaud oases and rain forests, tide pools and fir covered slopes, vast deserts and vaster seas--nothing boring and mundane. Lest we make it so.
So maybe it's the very thought that to admire the masterpiece means to understand there is One Who conceived it in the first place. And if we acknowledge that it is painted for us to stand in awe of and wonder at the artist, we must acknowledge the artist Himself. We would find that He is not only a brilliant designer, but that God is a faithful Lover, a righteous Judge, a generous Provider, a merciful Father and a keeper of covenant promises. God is a Personality. To be reckoned with. And the works of art in which we daily live are to remind us as we hear sea gulls call or see the stars twinkling their own specific glory in the skies at night that God is alive and intricately connected to and well acquainted with all of His creation. Every brush stroke. Every curve, height, depth and contour. Just like Monet or de la Tour. He is not like them. They are like Him. And if God's great works are hidden, it's because we don't want to see. Unlike Gurlitt who knew their worth, when we ignore the art that so decorates our world, we do so in order to ignore the Artist, and deny His value.
Oh, Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth! You have set Your glory above the heavens...When I look at the heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars You have set in place, what is man that You think about him?...... Psalm 8 (italics, mine)T
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