Today I thank God for artists.

Artists of all types. Writers. Painters. Singers. Song writers. Dancers. Poets. Sculptors. Artists dabbling in media they don’t yet have a name for.

While you and I are down here on life’s dance floor, shoulder-to-shoulder with each other and the world, artists are the people who levitate up to the balcony. While we bump and jostle each other here in the muck, solving problems and fixing potholes, the artist’s calling is to help us relate to the melee. They describe it. They saturate it with meaning. They glorify it. They profane it. They give this chaotic shivaree a shape, a texture, and a depth we yearn for. 

While I am grateful to (and for) artists, I am also compelled to confess that they scare me a little bit. They see things I would rather ignore. They feel things more deeply than I am comfortable feeling. Their fingertips have been sandpapered to an exquisite sensitivity that has driven some of them mad. Some of them go up to the balcony and never come down.

But we need artists. For the last two or three weeks I’ve had my nose down, plugging from one “necessary” to the next, convinced that stepping back, looking up, and looking around was an extravagance. I mean, how does one justify smelling the roses when the house is on fire? (Figuratively speaking, fortunately).

It reminds me of a story I read recently in the bible. The story is called The Transfiguration. You can find it in Matthew 17, Mark 9, and Luke 9. In this story, Jesus takes three of his favorite disciples up onto the top of “a high mountain,” as the text tells us. While there they see some pretty fantastic visions including visions of Moses and Elijah… visions of Jesus chatting with these central Old Testament characters while his clothes turn a dazzling white. 

The disciple Peter – always the impetuous one, most prone to act before engaging his brain – gets excited and wants to stay up there on the mountain. In fact, he tells Jesus he wants to build three shelters up there: one for Jesus, and one each for the other two guys. 

In all three versions of the story, it ends with Jesus telling the disciples that they must go back down the mountain, carry on with the mission, and not tell anyone what happened there. I think he took them up there to give them a look at the endpoint… the place where this was all headed.

The thing I like about this story, though, is how it shows us Jesus as the artist. It provides a vivid illustration of his unique ability to keep the ethereal and ephemeral in perfect balance. This story demonstrates that Jesus is that rare individual who can live with one foot in the balcony and one foot on the dance floor and yet be somehow 100% present to both. 

As for the rest of us, some of us are like Peter. We want to stay up there on the mountain and keep grooving on the heavenly vibe. Most of us, though, are like the other two disciples. They were like, “I don’t get it! What the hell IS this place? Who are those people? Can we please go home now?”

Thank God for artists. Thank God for the people who support them. Thank God for people who can fluidly move back and forth between this world and that one.

Abundant blessings;