Art in Retirement- Ex 31 (Day 2)

Ex 31:1 The Lord spoke to Moses: 2 “See, I have chosen Bezalel son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, 3 and I have filled him with the Spirit of God in skill, in understanding, in knowledge, and in all kinds of craftsmanship, 4 to make artistic designs for work with gold, with silver, and with bronze, 5 and with cutting and setting stone, and with cutting wood, to work in all kinds of craftsmanship.The NET Bible

The Scripture of the day is Exodus 31. In that passage, the Lord is explaining how to construct the ark and the tabernacle, and He begins by saying that he given certain individuals certain gifts to be able to create the beautiful fixtures. These artisans would be given the task of creating the tabernacle and all of its fixtures and implements which would, all together, form a representation of the great throne room in heaven.

This reminded my of a passage from C.S. Lewis’s, The Great Divorce. In this wonderful book, C.S. Lewis portrays a series of conversations between some recently departed spirits and their heavenly guides as they decide whether they would prefer to go to heaven or hell. One particular spirit had been a famous artist on earth. He was inspired by the sights he first say as he gazed into heaven and exclaimed “I should like to paint this.” His heavenly guide then explained to him that there was really no need for painting in heaven. 

The Spirit shook his head, scattering light from his hair as he did so. "That sort of thing's no good here," he said. "What do you mean?" said the Ghost. "When you painted on earth-at least in your earlier days-it was because you caught glimpses of Heaven in the earthly landscape. The success of your painting was that it enabled others to see the glimpses too. But here you are having the thing itself. It is from here that the messages came. There is no good telling us about this country, for we see it already. In fact we see it better than you do."  

C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, Chapter 9

In my case, I will be doing a photo shoot for the Outback camp here in Mobile this weekend. In photography, as with working in gold and silver or in painting, these passages remind me that the goal to to represent heavenly beauty in an earthly form.  If we can catch a snap shot of the beauty of the earth in such a way that people get a glimpse of the true beauty of heaven, then we can inspire them to contemplate the goodness of God and the beauty of His creation. Just as the ancient artisans in Exodus were able to create a tabernacle the gave the people a place to worship that was a representation of heaven, so should we strive to create works of beauty that inspire worship of our heavenly Father. So there you have it.  Being retired for the second day now, I don’t have any work objectives, but I do have a task laid out for me.