Help Wanted: Inquire Within
Painted in Grand Rapids, MI, 2000
In early 1999, when the news broke in U.S. media of the devastating AIDS crisis marching across sub-Saharan Africa, my dear wife, Caryn Beth, and I heard what felt like a Divine Cry: a calling of people to the battle for the tens of millions of orphans left in AID's wake. As we responded to this cry, God opened speaking engagements for us across the United States and we invited listeners to hear what His Spirit was saying about the James 1:27 “true religion” of tending to the unprecedented needs of orphans and widows. As we spoke with heart-felt passion and a briefcase full of heart rending statistics, we found very few people were truly interested. Sadly, during months of speaking, no one seriously asked if we knew of a way they could get involved.
In early 2000, we were asked to help lead a team to Mozambique, to help reopen an orphanage whose property had been ravaged by flood. As I was packing for the trip, I felt the Spirit of God say to me simply: "Take your art with you." "My art?" I literally said back to Him, "What art?!" At the time, I'd attempted nothing of artistic merit in decades.
I had been a pretty creative child, Art turning out to be the subject I felt myself best wired for and alive in. But for nearly two decades of adulthood, I had been running hard from my artistic side, beating myself up in a fruitless effort to unlock the analytical and administrative gifts I lacked, gifts the marketplace demanded and gifts that therefore could pay the bills. Was I artistic? Yes. But I had found no way in which my gift carried any value in the real world.
Furthermore, I have no formal training in art. So it was a big surprise, at 37, to suddenly have my core artistic gifts dug up and called into action by heaven. But I knew the Voice; by God's grace; without knowing where it would lead me, I obeyed: I got ready to "take my art" along with me to Africa.
To do so, I bought some chocolate-colored paper and took a set of colored pencils along with us to Mozambique. Each day there during our three weeks of cleanup and building restoration, I would also fit in two or three sketches of the different children we were caring for, jotting personal notes about them at the bottom of each sketch. The colored pencils captured the light dancing off the beautiful faces of these priceless, vulnerable children. Our amazing visit came to an end all too soon, and we returned to the States.
As a part of our debrief after the trip, I showed one of our pastors back home the sketches I had done. What followed was an enthusiastic request for me to put together a show of these sketches.
I began the process of dry mounting 25 or so of those simple sketches, but the prospect of showing them publicly—my first formal art exhibit as an adult—coupled with the serious needs of the children who would be the subject of my artwork, begged me to do more. To tell the story Is as trying to tell, I found myself longing to paint in oils.
After inquiring from several about the prospects of my taking painting lessons, I opted instead to just purchase the materials and begin to paint with oils on my own. Help Wanted: Inquire Within, was my third canvas. (21 years and almost 100 paintings later, this one remains one of the pieces dearest to my heart. It joined two other oils I painted for that first show.)
In the autumn of 2000, in the foyer of mid-western church, I set out the dry-mounted, framed sketches and three of my first oil paintings for exhibition. After the church service, people filed into the foyer to see the display. As they went from sketch to sketch, and viewed the paintings, suddenly people were in tears. First one, then another, and then another--many people came up to me with tear-streamed faces and asked questions like: "How can we help?", or, "Do you know anything about how we can adopt?", or, "Where can we send money to help with this situation?" I was stunned.
Somehow the Spirit-infused artwork created an arena of encounter with the heart of God and the needs of the children in a way that months of the spoken word had not been able to do; encounter led to transformation; transformed minds then got involved. Several of the lives that were so unexpectedly touched by that first art exhibit became a part of a lasting response to the AIDS crisis. And all because God had found a way to help me take my artistic core being seriously. Suddenly I saw that my artistic skill set had tremendous power and value, both in God’s eyes and in the real world, and could even be very much a part of the advance of the heart and kingdom of heaven on earth.
Since that day, my artistic side has been confidently surrendered to partnering with my Creator (who happens to also be my favorite artist and art teacher) in an effort to set up an opportunity for viewers to encounter God in every painting I do.
In early 2000, we were asked to help lead a team to Mozambique, to help reopen an orphanage whose property had been ravaged by flood. As I was packing for the trip, I felt the Spirit of God say to me simply: "Take your art with you." "My art?" I literally said back to Him, "What art?!" At the time, I'd attempted nothing of artistic merit in decades.
I had been a pretty creative child, Art turning out to be the subject I felt myself best wired for and alive in. But for nearly two decades of adulthood, I had been running hard from my artistic side, beating myself up in a fruitless effort to unlock the analytical and administrative gifts I lacked, gifts the marketplace demanded and gifts that therefore could pay the bills. Was I artistic? Yes. But I had found no way in which my gift carried any value in the real world.
Furthermore, I have no formal training in art. So it was a big surprise, at 37, to suddenly have my core artistic gifts dug up and called into action by heaven. But I knew the Voice; by God's grace; without knowing where it would lead me, I obeyed: I got ready to "take my art" along with me to Africa.
To do so, I bought some chocolate-colored paper and took a set of colored pencils along with us to Mozambique. Each day there during our three weeks of cleanup and building restoration, I would also fit in two or three sketches of the different children we were caring for, jotting personal notes about them at the bottom of each sketch. The colored pencils captured the light dancing off the beautiful faces of these priceless, vulnerable children. Our amazing visit came to an end all too soon, and we returned to the States.
As a part of our debrief after the trip, I showed one of our pastors back home the sketches I had done. What followed was an enthusiastic request for me to put together a show of these sketches.
I began the process of dry mounting 25 or so of those simple sketches, but the prospect of showing them publicly—my first formal art exhibit as an adult—coupled with the serious needs of the children who would be the subject of my artwork, begged me to do more. To tell the story Is as trying to tell, I found myself longing to paint in oils.
After inquiring from several about the prospects of my taking painting lessons, I opted instead to just purchase the materials and begin to paint with oils on my own. Help Wanted: Inquire Within, was my third canvas. (21 years and almost 100 paintings later, this one remains one of the pieces dearest to my heart. It joined two other oils I painted for that first show.)
In the autumn of 2000, in the foyer of mid-western church, I set out the dry-mounted, framed sketches and three of my first oil paintings for exhibition. After the church service, people filed into the foyer to see the display. As they went from sketch to sketch, and viewed the paintings, suddenly people were in tears. First one, then another, and then another--many people came up to me with tear-streamed faces and asked questions like: "How can we help?", or, "Do you know anything about how we can adopt?", or, "Where can we send money to help with this situation?" I was stunned.
Somehow the Spirit-infused artwork created an arena of encounter with the heart of God and the needs of the children in a way that months of the spoken word had not been able to do; encounter led to transformation; transformed minds then got involved. Several of the lives that were so unexpectedly touched by that first art exhibit became a part of a lasting response to the AIDS crisis. And all because God had found a way to help me take my artistic core being seriously. Suddenly I saw that my artistic skill set had tremendous power and value, both in God’s eyes and in the real world, and could even be very much a part of the advance of the heart and kingdom of heaven on earth.
Since that day, my artistic side has been confidently surrendered to partnering with my Creator (who happens to also be my favorite artist and art teacher) in an effort to set up an opportunity for viewers to encounter God in every painting I do.