Hidden Art: Beholding the First Artist

The Hidden Art of Homemaking, Chapter 1 - "The First Artist"

Books on homemaking usually begin by looking around one’s own home to take inventory or by focusing on a designer’s models. Edith Schaeffer, however, doesn’t start by looking inward or outward. She starts by looking upward, which is the right place to look as we think of creativity. She points us first to the preeminence of God as Creator.

I LOVED this chapter. I felt stimulated as I contemplated God as the First Artist and the many expressions of His creativity—His sculptures, mobiles, light shows, music, and gardens. The thought of all the elements of pleasure in His creation--God’s pleasure in creating, our pleasure in admiring His creation, and His pleasure in our pleasure—filled me with joy and wonder.

A few days ago, Elizabeth pointed out an unusual bird in our backyard. I stopped muddling about in the kitchen, Daniel put down his book, and Jonathan left his computer. We went over to the window and admired the new feathered visitor hopping around. We have seen finches, sparrows, phoebes, crows, owls, and hawks before, but this particular bird was a little taller than a house finch, with a very pale red breast and yellow beak, and with a comical gait. We wondered what kind it was and vowed to look it up in one of our bird guides. It took just a few minutes to turn aside, but that little moment brought us joy and thanksgiving.

Another day, Elizabeth found a pretty rock in the backyard. She began digging around the dirt for more and called Daniel to join her in the messy endeavor. She later showed me a whole handful of rocks they had unearthed. I then remembered a stash of rocks I had ordered when we were studying earth science. I took it out of storage, and with a rock guide in hand, Elizabeth enjoyed inspecting all of the variations of colors and shapes and fragility between the specimens. She exclaimed, “God must have had so much fun creating all these different rocks!” 

Beholding. I declared in January that “beholding” would be my word for the year. 2 Corinthians 3:8 stirred me: "We all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.” I vowed that I would behold that which is true, good, and beautiful.

However, after reading chapter one, I realized that I have been too busy lately to behold. And that busyness has stolen much peace and joy from my soul. Something is wrong when expressing creativity seems more of a burden than a delight. Cliche aside, I haven't even taken the time to stop and smell the roses in my own garden.

Elizabeth is considered the artist in our family. I've always believed that her gift of creativity was a special gift from God. As I read through this chapter, God reminded me of the truth that we are His image bearers, and as such, we all have the creativity gene living within us. If we all have the ability to create beauty in some form or another, then why is her artistry in a different league than mine? 

Elizabeth notices things. Birds. Rocks. Worms. Stars. She takes time to observe. She delights in them. She beholds God's beauty. I think that’s what elevates her artistry. You can’t draw water from an empty well. 

In The Pleasures of God, John Piper writes of a lecture given by one of his favorite teachers at Wheaton College, Clyde Kilby.

“Kilby had eyes. Oh, what eyes he had! He read to us eleven resolutions he had made for staying alive to God’s glory. I will only mention one in closing. He said, ‘I shall sometimes look back at the freshness of vision I had in childhood and try, at least for a little while, to be, in the words of Lewis Carroll, the ‘child of the pure unclouded brow, and dreaming eyes of wonder.’

“One of the tragedies of growing up is that we get used to things. It has its good side of course, since irritations may cease to be irritations. But there is immense loss when we get used to the redness of the rising sun, and the roundness of the moon, and the whiteness of the snow, the wetness of rain, the blueness of the sky, the buzzing of bumble bees, the stitching of crickets, the invisibility of wind, the unconscious constancy of heart and diaphragm, the weirdness of noses and ears, the number of grains of sand on a thousand beaches, the never-ceasing crash crash crash of countless waves, and ten million kingly-clad flowers flourishing and withering in woods and mountain valleys where no one sees but God. I invite you, with Clyde Kilby, to seek a ‘freshness of vision,’ to look, as though it were the first time, not at the empty product of accumulated millennia of aimless evolutionary accidents (which no child ever dreamed of), but at the personal handiwork of an infinitely strong, creative, and exuberant Artist who made the earth and the sea and everything in them. I invite you to believe (like the children believe) ‘that today, this very day, some stroke is being added to the cosmic canvas that in due course you shall understand with joy as a stroke made by the Architect who calls Himself Alpha and Omega.’”

Lord, give me new eyes to behold you and a freshness of vision.

[The Hidden Art of Homemaking Book Club, hosted by Cindy at Ordo Amoris]

"One thing I have desired of the LORD, that will I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD, and to inquire in His temple." Psalm 27:4