what is art? - 1990
What is ART? God is the Creator of our World, Our Universe. His art is LIFE. He has made a visible world around us, full of detail and complexity, and He has lavished the same intricate care on the world outside of our periphery. High in the mountains where men seldom walk, God has always given rich colours and delicate perfumes to each flower He has made. He didn't smudge the definition, forget to cluster the priapic pistil with pollen kissed stamen simply because explorers and their sherpas might not see them.
Deep in the ocean where the pressure-per-square-inch prevents any man's eyes from watching, unseen and uncategorized fish-things enjoy their life cycle in God's gaze, particulate, fluorescent, soft-boned and shimmering in gilled glory, not for the approval of man but for God's pleasure.
Life is God's art. God has rendered His art in our universe in three dimensions; revealed Himself to us in the Trinity, Given man the triune aspects of body, spirit, soul; set us in motion on the planes of time, space and matter, bonded our entities with the protons, neutrons and electrons; translated matter catalystially into energy through proteins, carbohydrates and fats; supported our life on land, air and sea with food, oxygen and water.
He has given to man and woman a child, and the three perceptive senses of touch, sight, and sound. While textbooks errantly include taste and smell and scientists debate the presence of quarks and black holes, God moves on and doesn't move at all. He is the Alpha, The I Am, and the Omega; The Past, The Omni-Present and The Future.
There were three crosses on that hill. One man was perfect, one man repented of his imperfection, and the third man embraced his sin in willful death lock, unrepentant. Christ spent three days in the grave. He broke the gates of death and arose, sealing the resurrection, redemption, and salvation for the cause of our body, spirit and soul. Now we have good, great reason to walk in faith, hope and love in this three dimensional realm He fashioned for us. One third of the angels fell and the other two-thirds stand against them in the strength of that majority, while God sustains us as we wrestle not against flesh, or blood, but against spiritual principalities; that wickedness ascribed to high places.
What is the art of man? It is sufficient as a pale copy of God's visible Creation. No painter ever brushed, colored, and shaped at his canvas with any original vision. No sculptor molded the clay, chiseled the marble, or smelted the metal with any unimaginable result. We are God's unbound art, His Creation. Let us reflect this in our own art; His Love, His Mercy, His Forgiveness.
Larry Norman - East Berlin 1990
