The thing behind the thing

I've had ample opportunity the last month to flex my creative muscles again. SALT planning requires constant foray into the imagination as I develop the curriculum from the ground up. Not only that, but I've taken on two other creative projects: a history timeline wall & a video project. I'm constantly ideating & planning. I also get to use my design background to develop marketing material & visual aids for SALT. With this all re-activating, it's been taxing but fulfilling to engage what feels like my whole person in all of these different areas. Every God-given gifting, talent, & skill I've must tap into as I jump from project to project: SALT prep to pre-production to brochure design to video shooting to instructing to hosting to interviewing to worship leading to preaching to kitchen leading. Yes, I've done every single one of those things this last week. It's really putting my adaptability & strategic thinking to the test!

In the midst of all this I had a really cool conversation with our executive director's wife, Hannah. We talked about the struggles & the summits of living with a creative mind. It has highs and lows; in fact, one of the key facets of creativity is the frustration before the breakthrough into pure flow. I love how she put it: pursuing the meaning behind everything. It's beautiful; this pursuit of truth & beauty beyond the surface is the mission of the creative imaging God. Every single thing he's created is more than a thing; the thing behind the thing reveals his character, values, & intentions. I think this poetry of atoms, stars, and everything in between shows the kind of person our God is. What a terrible thing that we have done, to ignore & obscure the thing behind the thing he intended to be clear.

It's in pause, in meditation, in considering that we can let reality flow past us & accept God's invitation to venture into his meta-reality. We know from birth there is more than what we can see; "God has put eternity into the heart of a man." It is not what is definitively, physically real that is most real; there's something more beyond this veil we live under.

Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But 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.
II Corinthians 3:16-18 NKJV

It's so tempting to be caught up in the worries of this world; Christ himself warns against it as a threat to the seed planted within us. If our eyes are set only on darkness, how great will the darkness within us grow! But if we set our vision beyond the mundane, if we meditate on what is holy, things from above, we can see the Glory of the Lord. If there's any thing behind the thing I want to see, it is this: the Face of God waiting for me to notice Him shining upon me. May I bear this glory, so that someone else searching for the thing behind the thing might see my face & recognize the Person behind me.