resurrection

Tapestry: Beauty Resurrected

April 24, 2009 By heather Leave a Comment

I have to be honest: This is my favorite piece I’ve written on beauty. It might be one of my favorites I’ve written period.

At Tapestry today, I blogged about Beauty resurrected. A taste:

"Beauty transforms. This does not mean that it smooths over like
retouched photos. It doesn’t erase–Christ’s resurrected body had scars
in his hands and feet. Instead, it draws us into God’s story and
through that, gives life and vitality. It takes a prostitute, a
mourning widow, and a rape victim and includes them in Christ’s
ancestry. It makes a couple grieving over infertility for almost a
hundred years give birth to a nation. It shows how a couple who
committed adultery then murder to hide their shame raised the man who
would build the most magnificent structure in Israel’s history."

(Read the rest here.)

I love the Easter season. In Lent, we join Christ’s fasting in the wilderness. In Passion Week, we enter into his suffering for mankind.

But in Easter, we join Christ’s defeat of death. We join his new life. We celebrate! To participate in this celebration of new life, I’m taking up two new things. The first, I mentioned before, is a new small group. It’s just three of us, and the study combines lectio divina with spiritual disciplines. I love the other two girls in the group. I’d say I can’t wait to see what God will do with this–and that’s true–but I already see him working.

The second is related: as part of the lectio divina we practice daily, I want to meditate through visual art. This is not a particular talent I have. I won’t be a rich and famous painter someday. But as I meditate on the patterns and rhythms of the Scripture, as I pray through them, I’m drawing, collaging (well, it’s a word now!), and painting.

So those are my Easter practices.

Filed Under: beauty, Easter, Jesus Christ, resurrection, tapestry

Tapestry: Theology of Failure

January 30, 2009 By heather Leave a Comment

"Do we have a theology of failure? Not of suffering, but of failure . . . I ask because this is a period of failure for me. I have the Midas touch turned awry–everything I touch turns to dust."

I’m up today at Tapestry exploring failure and what it has to do with my Christian life.

Read the rest.

Filed Under: failure, hope, resurrection, theology

Art and Christianity: An Interview with Dr. Glenn Kreider, Part 4

November 4, 2008 By heather Leave a Comment

This is the fourth and final part of my interview with Dr. Glenn
Kreider of Dallas Theological Seminary. In this conversation, we talk
about the importance of the physical redemption of the earth to our
theology of art.

This video runs under four minutes.

Filed Under: aesthetics, art, beauty, Christianity, culture, Glenn Kreider, podcast, resurrection, spirituality, theology, video blog

Art and Christianity: An Interview with Dr. Glenn Kreider, Part Two

October 21, 2008 By heather Leave a Comment

This is the second part of my interview with Dr. Glenn Kreider, a professor at Dallas Theological Seminary. The interview is about beauty and sentimentality, and this segment looks specifically at the cross and resurrection.

The video runs about 5 minutes.

Related quotes from "Beauty, Sentimentality, and the Arts," an essay by Jeremy Begbie in The Beauty of God: Theology and the Arts:

"In a nutshell, Christian sentimentalism arises from a premature grasp for Easter morning, a refusal to follow the three days of Easter as three days in an irreversible sequence of victory over evil" (p. 61).

"Easter does of course throw its light on the ‘renting’ of Friday (to use Yeats’s word), but not a soothing glow so much as a white light that exposes the rupture between Creator and creature, the depths to which the human creature has sunk and the depths to which God’s love is prepared to reach" (p. 62).

"This is emphatically not to say that the crucifixion as an event of torture and death is really beautiful and not ugly, if only we would change our perspective. That would be gross sentimentality (and, of course, opens the door to sadism or sadomasochism). But it is to say that in and through this particular torture, crucifixion and death, God’s love is displayed at its most potent" (p.63).

You can see part one of the interview here.

Filed Under: aesthetics, art, beauty, Christianity, cross, crucifixion, Glenn Kreider, Jeremy Begbie, podcast, resurrection, sentimentality, video blog

Tapestry: Imagine

September 25, 2008 By heather 2 Comments

I’m up at the Tapestry blog today talking about how our imagination can spur us on toward missions, to sharing Christ’s love with the world.

"Let’s take a tour of the new earth.
Perhaps you want to go on the back of a tiger. Maybe you prefer flying. Or walking on water…All these people are doing exactly what God created us to do: glorify him as we
create beauty. Contrast this with the picture we often see around us: people hurting each
other, consuming rather than creating, destroying rather than building."

Read the rest of the post.

Filed Under: imagination, missions, resurrection, tapestry

Guest blogging

August 13, 2008 By heather Leave a Comment

Oops! Forgot to tell you guys I’m guestblogging today at Dee Stewart’s Christian Fiction blog. It’s about the Olympics and the idea of Christ’s victory.

Filed Under: Christian Fiction blog, Christus Victor, Dee Stewart, Olymics, opening ceremony, resurrection

All the Nations

August 11, 2008 By heather Leave a Comment

What the opening ceremony to the Olympics reminded me of:

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, we must get rid of every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and run with endurance the race set out for us, keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. For the joy set out for him he endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God" (Hebrews 12:1-2).

"God exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow–in heaven and on earth and under the earth–and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father" (Philippians 2:9-11).

"Now I saw no temple in the city, because the Lord God–the All-Powerful–and the Lamb are its temple. The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, because the glory of God lights it up, and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light and the kings of the earth will bring their grandeur into it. Its gates will never be closed during the day (and there will be no night there). They will bring the grandeur and the wealth of the nations into it" (Revelation 21:22-26).

Filed Under: Christ, Hebrews, Olympics, opening ceremony, Philippians, resurrection, Revelation, worship

The Jersey Shore, or Glimpses of the Resurrection

July 1, 2008 By heather 8 Comments

The shore is a place of Revelation to me. It’s a foretaste of what we will know in God’s re-creation. Fortresses of sand cross the beach line, their gates always open. They’re built with love and laughter. The joy is in the creation.

It’s a place where giggles escape.

It’s a place of games–paddleball, whiffle ball, football, frisbie, bocce, horseshoes. It’s a place where we remember to be child-like.

In this place, it matters not from whence you came or to where you go. It matters not your education or training. All that matters is your mutual joy and comaraderie. Strangers become fast friends.

In this place, we wear our delight like red carnations. And like Moses’ encounter with God, it fades slowly from our faces.

I taste the resurrection in the salt air, in the laughter, in the beauty, in the ever-changing and never-changing ocean.

And, I taste the resurrection in meeting friends. Lela lives in Moscow. I live in Dallas. We met online for a Soul Per Suit bible study. And we discovered that we were at Ocean City just blocks from each other! Lela walked down the beach.

And, of course, I taste the resurrection in the water ice (pronounced wooder ice).

Filed Under: beach, giggles, joy, laughter, new creation, ocean, podcast, resurrection, shore, video blog

Christus Victor

June 9, 2008 By heather 4 Comments

It can hit anywhere–on a sunny, blue day with birds chirping, flowers blooming, friends laughing, or a day with deep thunder and bright lightening. Without warning, I’m overcome by the evilness in this world.

It’s not so much about anything personal, nothing done to me.

Then again, it’s always personal, this evilness in the world.

I imagine the children who never got to be children, the dancers who were maimed, the architects whose hands were cut off. Did they ever know that they were children and dancers and architects? I look at my nieces and nephew and wonder who will protect them.

With Job, I cry, Why? With Habbakuk, I cry, How long?

Christus Victor, the early church father’s said while staring the lions in the mouth and hanging upside-down on crosses. Christ is victor over the evil that held us hostage. For the hope set before us, said the author of Hebrews.

And I realize that this is the heart of the book I recently began writing–what do you do with all this evilness in the world when you fight and you fight and you fight, and people still take lives and exploit the weak and crush the innocent.

Filed Under: Christian hope, Christus Victor, evil, hope, resurrection

Second Life

June 3, 2008 By heather 3 Comments

My eight-year-old niece and I had a chat about the resurrection the other day.

"There will be all kinds of animals," I said.

"Dogs?"

"Yup."

"Cats?"

"Yup."

"Bunnies."

"Yup."

"Monkeys?"

"Yup. And we’ll get to play with them and always have fun. No one will be sad."

"Kind of like your second life?"

Second life. I like that. Of course, then she asked about our third life, and I explained that we wouldn’t need one. We’d never die in our second life.

"Never? Not even when we’re a hundred?"

"Not even when we’re a thousand."

"Or a million?"

You see how the conversation went. Then my niece asked me, "And all humans will be there?"

"If they believe in Jesus."

"Oh. I hope Hannah believes in Jesus," she said. "She’s my best friend."

"Well, you should ask her."

It struck me. That’s the heart of evangelism–getting excited about our second life and wanting others to be there at the resurrection. I’m not saying we shouldn’t be working with the Holy Spirit to see that future sneak into the present. I’m not saying feeding the hungry and freeing the oppressed and healing the wounded is not integral to the work of God’s kingdom. I’m saying sometimes I’ve forgotten this childlike approach to evangelism.

I don’t want to be one of those people knocking on your door with a tract that boils the Bible down to four pages with cartoons.

And so I’ve forgotten the excitement of bringing others into the resurrection, of wanting them to participate in this second life where "blind eyes will open, deaf ears will hear. Then the lame will leap like a deer, the mute tongue will shout for joy; for water will flow in the desert, streams in the wilderness." I love to dream about the resurrection, but I’ve been selfish about it. I’ve been afraid to share it.

I’ve been afraid of what others might think.

Filed Under: evangelism, resurrection, theology