Artists, we need you! A plea and a prayer for artists.

A couple weeks ago, Stuart and I visited the Museo de Memoria y Tolerancia in Mexico City. Dedicated to the memory of genocide victims and their survivors, the museum transports the visitor in time from the Holocaust to present day with a special exhibition at the end honoring Martin Luther King (I blogged about it here).

After an emotional, but well-spent two hours, Stuart and I headed toward the Zócolo (main square) and came across a very different kind of exhibit – El Arte de la Indumentaria y la Moda en México – The Art of Apparel and Fashion in Mexico. Like a daisy sprouting from the rubble, the artistry of design and color refreshed our minds and souls. 

Later that day, I paused to consider how each museum depicted humanity's great potential. The first displayed humanity's potential to dehumanize and destroy, and the second showcased humanity's potential to affirm and create.

Lately, we've seen too much of one and not nearly enough of the other. Have we not? I offer a heartfelt plea to all artists and creative talents out there: We need you. We need you to affirm life and overwhelm us with beauty. In the rubble of hatred and violence in our world, we need the daisies of hope and love to spring up. 

I am grateful for a God who appreciates beauty and artistry, so much so he filled the artisan Bezalel with his Spirit to enable him in his artistic calling (Exodus 31:1-11). Likewise, we are God's masterpiece created in his image (Ephesians 2:10; Genesis 1:26), therefore to create is to reflect the image of our Creator.

Again, I offer a humble plea to all poets and storytellers, painters and sculptors, photographers and architects, dressmakers and printmakers, actors and vocalists, songwriters and instrumentalists: Remind us of humanity's positive, life-affirming potential. Reflect the image of God back to us in your artistry. Let your creative powers flow and inundate our dark world with light and color, beauty and life.

A Prayer for Artists

by Vienna Cobb Anderson

Bless the creators, O God of creation,

who by their gifts make the world

a more joyful and beautiful realm.
Through their labors
they teach us to see more clearly

the truth around us.
In their inspiration
they call forth wonder and awe
in our own living.
In their hope and vision
they remind us 
that life is holy.
Bless all who create in your image,
O God of creation.
Pour your Spirit upon them
that their hearts may sing
and their works be fulfilling.
Amen.

(http://www.beliefnet.com/prayers/protestant/work/prayer-for-artists.aspx#OK2IELwXY7R9f0Mm.99)