I’m photographing my first wedding this weekend. Whenever people ask me about it, I inform them that I was asked to shoot it and it is not something I solicited. If I hadn’t been asked, I doubt that I ever would have photographed a wedding.
This is one of the most important days of their life and I’ve been entrusted to capture it all. What a huge burden of responsibility and a huge opportunity to fail.
Those are the initial thoughts that come to my mind whenever I’ve thought about photographing a wedding, and they’re the reason why I’d never taken on such a venture until asked. Come to think of it, before I preached for the first time I had many of the same sentiments as well.
I like to play things safe.
Common in my thought process are things like: If we go on this bridge that says ‘no trespassing’ the cops may come. My season ticket to Duke basketball will be revoked if you use one of my friend’s student IDs to get into the game. If I go hang out with you guys I’ll have less time to study for the exam and I could do poorly. That idea will never work in this church.
And while sometimes playing it safe is a good thing, I’ve been convicted about some of my tendencies towards safety and stability, and fears of failure lately. And today, I came across an article advocating this idea which hit me like a gust of freezing wind on a winter night:
Creativity and safety are incompatible.
It sounds simple, and may not make much sense to you at this point, but I urge you to read the article I’ve reprinted below which explains this better than I ever could. This truth has profound implications for our daily lives, our relationship with God, our art, and much more. However, don’t read it if you’re not ready to be awakened by a fresh wind.
By Cole Nesmith - One of the founders of Uncover the Color — a collective of Christian artists I recently joined.
We live in a culture consumed by safety. There are organizations completely dedicated to making sure we’re safe while working and traveling and eating and doing just about any other common practice.
And, being good westerners, we’ve allowed our cultural obsession for safety to define our lives as Christians. We’ve spent the last several hundred years sterilizing our relationship with Christ into a religion that is neat, defined, predictable… might I say, systematic? We’ve worked hard to eliminate as much of the unknown as possible, and we wonder why we feel distant from a God who exists in the mysterious. Today, we try to compensate with our heads by creating large educational institutions where we can further define and attempt to know God intellectually.
Hence, today, my friend Dustin called me and asked :
What happened historically that caused Christians to stop being influencers and creators of culture? Where did our creativity go?
The answer : It was driven out by our fear of the unknown and our lust for answers.
Creativity and safety are incompatible.
Creativity is willing to step into the unknown and bring something new into existence.
Creativity is about an unbridled heart that is so free in who it was created to be that it is unstoppable.
Creativity is central to EVERYTHING God does. And I’m not just talking about the creative work of the land and seas and animals and you and me. I’m talking about things like redemption, peace, beauty and hope. These things can only exist when we tap into the creative heart of God.
When I pass a homeless drug addict on the street, I can respond with my earthly, uncreative heart that sees what is before me. Or, I can choose to look on with the creative heart of God that sees something that is yet to exist. God looks onto what seems like a dark canvas of nothingness and imagines a beautiful life – a tree bearing all kinds of good fruit that nourishes those who come to eat of it.
Recently, I was talking with a guy who has lived and worked in Haiti for the last 27 years. He said,
“the most difficult thing to overcome in Haitian culture is the pervasive mindset of “present hedonism.”
And it seems that statement is true for lots of Americans (especially American Christians) as well. We’re only concerned with the present, the now, today. We’ve lost the ability to dream. In short, his assessment is that one of the largest hurdles in Haiti is a lack of creativity.
That night, I posted this online :
Thinking about two future Haitis : One rebuilt on the foundation of creativity and the other built on the foundation of utility.
And the sole response :
I like the one where their foundation is Jesus
And that’s where we stand today – in a world where Christians have erected a wall of fear, prejudice and sterility between creativity and Jesus.
But when we truly look at the heart of Jesus and the river of the Holy Spirit, all we see is the unexpected.
I remember going to the Grand Canyon several years ago. I was on the road with some friends, and we drove all through the night. The next morning, when I woke up, we were parked in a campsite several hundred yards from the hole. I was so excited to start exploring that I skipped breakfast and jogged up the path to the canyon. It was beautiful. We hiked all day along the ridge occasionally walking out on the narrow pieces of rock that jutted from the main path – only 3 feet wide with hundreds of feet of cliff on each side. And no rails!
God wants to take humanity deep in the mystery of Himself, but for generations, Christians have stood on the bank of the river of His Spirit. And over time, the river has carved out a canyon before us. That canyon gets deeper and deeper. The rushing waters that we’re meant to swim in get farther and farther away. Some thought about diving in for a while, but eventually the river just looked like it was too far down to jump in. So we started building a fence. And today, that fence keeps us safely perched on top of the canyon. We have taken to study the rocks and the sand and the bushes. We become intimately acquainted with the signs of what once was. And as we turn our backs to the river, we settle into the comforts of the land.
But I’m so thirsty. And I know that there are people in the world that are too – people that are ready to swim in the river of God, not exactly sure what will happen, but ready nonetheless.
So, what do you say we tear down the fence, stand on the edge of the cliff and jump into the unknown, beautiful, creative heart of God?
Thanks for sharing this, Jonathan. It’s encouraging to know it was meaningful to you.