Masterpiece

The Bible says of us that “We are God’s masterpiece, created anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago”. Now that’s in the second chapter of Ephesians which has all sorts of other wonderful stuff about passing from death to life and being incorporated into this amazing body of people, this community we call the “church” in which we are no longer foreigners and aliens, trying to make it through life it all on our own.

The word “masterpiece” strikes me as very important. It’s “God’s workmanship” in other translations and is actually “poema”, in the original. That’s the Portuguese word for poem. I’m a unique work of art, a poem written by my Father God, the creative expression of His heart! Now, I was going to upload a picture of a Van Gogh or a Rembrandt to illustrate what’s going through my mind, but then above my desk is the “Old man of Stour” in the Isle of Skye looking down at me in glowing colours of the setting sun. So I’ll let you look at that instead. It’s the September page on the Scotsman calendar that my brother sends to me faithfully every Christmas. So, before I turn over to October, here it is. Now there’s a wild work of art, a masterpiece in granite and heather, in light and shade.

All of the wonderful fine art down through the centuries has been just men and women repeating in a lesser way what God has been doing all along - creating form and beauty out of rough raw materials, out of ochres and pastels, and setting it forth for others to wonder at and respond to. It strikes me that, if art and creativity is so much a central part of the Creator’s relationship with what he has made, then why is that so much of what we do as “church” tends to become routine and run of the mill? We repeat a tried and tested format every Sunday, but where is the imagination, the creativity? A good sermon should be a true work of art, a painting in the air made of words, a conception of the God we can’t see, formed out of the pages of the Bible. Singing and praising and praying should be art in motion, emerging from vibrant, imaginative souls caught up in a passionate relationship with their Lord.

That’s why we’re His “masterpiece”. So that we can explore fully all those wonderful things that He has already planned for us to do in our lives, and in so doing create our own personal “masterpiece”. For His Glory.