We have been having trouble with our server and many of you on our subscriber list did not receive the formation letter we sent out on January 15. Well, here it is. We have changed servers and hopefully those problems are now behind us. Our next musing will go out the beginning of February as scheduled. Thank you for your patience.

Larry Warner

Executive Director of b

To the One Whom Jesus Loves,

As you breathe, walk, and live your life with a continual conscious awareness of God’s deep and abiding love of you, personal transformation will take place. You will be freed to be loved, to love, and to uniquely be whom God has created you to be. The “stuff” (sin, brokenness, capacity for evil) that remains in you will lose its power to define and enslave you. As you experience more and more of God’s love for you, something surprising will begin to happen. You will begin to get in touch with a part of yourself that for many seems to be non-existent. Yet this part of you is part of what it means to be created in the image of God. It is a part that reflects who God is. That which I allude to is artistic creativity. As you fall more deeply in love with God you will find you are naturally drawn to be creative. God’s love for you creates in you a freedom, a freedom that manifests itself in creativity and also in a growing desire to express your love back to God.

As you are able to more fully internalize the unconditional, nothing can separate you love, that God has for you, you become free to explore new mediums for your response to this great and extraordinary love of God. You will find yourself becoming a dancer, a singer, a poet, a sculptor, a painter, a wood worker, a flower arranger, a writer, a bubble blower…the list goes on and on. As you develop a greater awareness of God’s amazing love you will want to express your love back to God and will very quickly discover that mere words are no longer enough to capture your feelings for God. It is then that you will turn to other means with which to express your profound love for God. And because of your embracing of God’s unconditional love, you will no longer be a slave to the expectations or criticisms of yourself or others. Instead you will be released to be creative, whatever that may mean for you. You will be freed to allow the words of G. K. Chesterton to be the banner that flies over all your creative endeavors:

“What ever is worth doing is worth doing poorly.”

Do not let the internalized “I can’t do that” stop you. Remember, God is your loving and caring parent who delights in your creative endeavors. God is honored and glorified by your creative expressions that arise from your love for God and your awareness of God's love for you. Each pinch of clay, each brush stroke, each note played is prayer, praise, is a declaration of your love of God, your honesty before God, and your desire to know and experience God. Your creative endeavors are received and embraced by God with great delight. Your heavenly Parent takes each special creative expression and places it on the mantle or affixes it to the refrigerator of heaven, while announcing to the whole of heaven, “Look what my child made for me! Isn’t my child great, isn’t my child wonderful, isn’t my child talented!” Remember, God looks beyond the end product into the heart, the passion, and the desire of the one who created it. The Holy Spirit takes our creative expressions that capture what mere words cannot, translating these masterpieces to God.

Do not fight against the urges of creativity that will emerge as you continue to walk in the light of God’s wondrous love for you. Let the creativity flow from your heart and out through your fingers and even your toes. Seek to use the arts to show God what you find your words incapable of expressing. Get some play-dough, paints, magazines, crayons, chalk, colored pencils, stamps, a horn, a drum, tambourines, glue, scissors, etc. Let these become aids that help you to release and express that which fills your heart to God. Remember, your Father/Mother in heaven is delighted and overjoyed by the gifts that flow from deep within your heart and are expressed in your creative endeavors.

So, this month, instead of encouraging you to look up and meditate on some verses, I am suggesting that you seek to find some creative ways to express your love to God. Use your freedom in being deeply and unconditionally loved by God to experiment with your artistic creativity.

Some ideas:
-write a love letter to Jesus,
-write your own Psalm or poem,
-use some magazines and create a collage,
-get hold of some water colors and paint,
-buy some play dough and sculpt,
-pick up an instrument and play a song to God,
-get some wood and create an altar to God,
-dance before God

Whatever you do be creative, have fun and worship God, declaring your feelings and love for God, which mere words cannot convey.

together on the Journey;

Larry

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