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The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.
They have no speech, they use no words;
no sound is heard from them.
Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.
PSALM 19:1–4
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Human beings have always made art. It’s not just something we do on the side once we’ve sorted life out: people make art in lean times as well as rich. When we make useful things, we often also make them beautiful. In all its various modes – visual, musical, literary, embodied, and sculptural – art is a human impulse, one that profoundly shapes our common life. So, where does art-making fit into God’s purposes?
In the first place, let’s consider delight. The world is full of colour and sound, light and form. It is excessively beautiful – and it draws delight out of us like nectar from a flower. We are captured by the undulations of a cloud formation, we are arrested by a blackbird’s evening song, we keep glancing at the tree outside, its repose and light-filled form. The world is beautiful, eloquent with meaning. This delight offers us an important clue about art’s place in the big picture.
Artists often want to respond to the world’s beauty by joining in. Indeed, our delight in the world can make us want to respond to its source: to express awe and gratitude, praising the Artist behind all this beauty. Psalm 19 does exactly this. The world, it claims, isn’t random but is a creation: the work of the glorious Creator. Despite the travail of sin and evil, this world is fluent with delight. In its purpose-filled radiance, it offers its life back to the Maker, declaring the glory of God.
What is our part in all this? And where does art come in? Well, Psalm 19 is itself a poem – a memorable, beautiful, work of art. Scripture frames human beings as God’s image-bearers, stewards of God’s good rule who are uniquely placed to represent creation to God in a free response of love. Indeed, as theologian Jeremy Begbie has explored, human beings are made to voice creation’s praise – and art-making is key to this. Alert to the beauty of the world, artists are called to respond by giving voice to creation’s praise and also – as the rest of the Book of Psalms so clearly shows – to its lament. Art can’t be merely for its own sake. Rather, art is one distinct way that we express creaturely life to God and before God.
There is of course more to say! But here, as you head into this week, stay alert to delight: it’s an invitation to join in on the concert of creation. |
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