Beautiful, Art and the Gospel of Grace

Conservative Evangelicals like me are typically not known for their "artsy" orientation to life.  I'm thankful that the Gospel of Grace is setting me free from that.

Grace helps me to see that all the world is the object of the Father's pure love. As a "creative creator," He gave it existence and now, when it is broken, He is at work fixing it - at great personal cost as an expression of His great personal love.  So it is all His, and it is all loved, even when broken.  That certainly includes me - but that statement also covers every other person I may meet, and the city I live in and countryside I drive through and on and on.

That said, enjoy this video produced by my friend Rob Wilkins for Grace Community Church in Asheville.


Beautiful - Fall in WNC from Bill Lindner on Vimeo.


I was unfamiliar with the artist India Arie before viewing the video.  After looking at a few of her own videos and hearing some other songs, I think I'm becoming a big fan though.

What strikes me about the experience of the video is the conviction that deep in each human heart is a longing for something that we can't produce ourselves.  We long for truth or beauty or security, but in the end, can't achieve it on our own.

The Gospel helps me understand that such longings are actually the "thumbprint" of our creator.  They are something that point beyond themselves to something greater and more real than the longing itself.  That reality is the God of the Bible, Who meets us, redeems and restores us through the Gospel.  My heart pursues beauty or truth or security.  In what may be the greatest of cosmic surprises, I find that God is Himself the Beautiful One, the Truth and our Final Security for which I long.  Jesus opens the door back to relationship with Him.

Artists are typically pursuing that beauty.  They express the longing and hope for that beauty often better than I can myself.  And one need not be a Christ-follower to express that longing of the heart.  I don't know a thing about India Arie's personal faith, but I hear her wonderfully singing what I take to be a universal yearning of the heart for something more beautiful than I myself can create.

Because of that dynamic, art can be a meeting place between the longings of the heart and the Hope of the Gospel.  Even when that longing is expressed by one who would be far from belief in God.  And only when we connect with the the Gospel and not some religious human moralism - what I regularly call "Churchianity."  In truth, our hearts yearn for something more than what we ourselves could ever produce.  What a wonder that our yearning is met by God Himself.  Indeed, the video reminds me that all creation yearns for and finds in the Gospel, that relationship with the Beautiful One.

This video was part of our Worship of God at Christ Covenant on Sunday, November 7.

You may want to check out a previous post on this blog: Art in the Life of the Church

Take a moment and read through India Arie's lyrics, the watch the video again.

The time is right
I'm gonna pack my bags
And take that journey down the road
Cause over the mountain I see the bright sun shining
And I want to live inside the glow
Yeah


I wanna go to a place where I am nothing and everything
That exists between here and nowhere
I wanna go to a place where time has no consequences oh yeah
The sky opens to my prayers


I wanna go to beautiful, beautiful, beautiful,


Please understand
That its not that I don't care
But right now these walls are closing in on me
I love you more than I love life itself
But I need to find a place were I can breathe
I can breathe


I wanna go to a place where I can hold the intangible
And let go of the pain with all my might
I wanna go to a place where I'm suspended on ecstasy
Somewhere between dark and light
Where wrong becomes right


I wanna go to beautiful, beautiful, beautiful,