The world is beautiful because they lived....

Playing For Change
Click on the image and watch all the artists in this song...amazing.

The dreamers are the saviours of the world…. Humanity cannot forget its dreamers; it cannot let their ideals fade and die; it lives in them; it knows them as the realities which it shall one day see and know…. Composer, sculptor, painter, poet, prophet, sage; these are the makers of the after-world, the architects of heaven. The world is beautiful because they have lived….— James Allen

Ultimately any light we see in us or each other, is but a distant glimmer of the true light that enlightens every man (John 1:9). That doesn't take away from the beauty of what is...but it hints at the storehouse from which it comes.

I loved the musical piece above, it nourished my weary heart this morning. I have found myself in need of the soothing ministry of the artists of late...my spirit has been low, due to so many challenging conflicts, pressures, situations and colliding personal realities among the people I pastor and know. It's just life...happening, at an intensity that leaves me sometimes drained. After spending my morning in the works of poets, I saw this and thought it was a fitting piece to offer others who might be struggling to refuel the theologian, the counselor, the teacher within.

Examples like this song, are one of the reasons I am committed to figuring out how to nurture the arts, naturally among our community life at Jacob's Well. There is a place for spoken words...but the artists can take the ingredients of truth, ideas, thoughts, feelings, contradictions, paradoxes and doctrine and make a meal that savors each part.

Artists help me believe.