The importance of drawing

MILTON GLASER DRAWS & LECTURES from C. Coy on Vimeo.

Amazing Grace Typography from River Valley Church on Vimeo.

RVC showed this video at church awhile back and I just found it online and thought I would post it on my blog for more to see!

Puppies Dressed As Cats

I am now the future.

We all know the saying, "the children are our future" but once you get passed the stage of being a child you tend to forget you were once a child that was told that someday you would be the future. We get caught up in raising the next generation and making sure they are succesful that we forget we ARE the present generation.

I recently taught a three day class at the Eagan Art House. The second day of class one of my student's grandmother dropped her off. I kept looking at this woman thinking she looked a lot like my preschool teacher. The last day of class my student's grandmother dropped her off again and this time I had the courage to ask if she in fact was Mrs. Beecher. And obviously it was her! (or else I wouldn't be blogging about a woman who I thought looked like my preschool teacher but turned out not to be her....) Even more amazing is that she remembered who I was. We chatted briefly about our lives and then I started class.

Its crazy to think that my preschool teacher was dropping off her granddaughter for me to teach her. The realm of education had come full circle. I realized I am now the future and while it is important for me to guide those who are coming after me, it is also important to not forget that I am now the present future. This thought process helps put life back into a bit of perspective that we ourselves can't forget to live out our own life to its fullest potential that is only accomplished through our Lord Christ Jesus.

Give Blood, Give LIFE.

Giving Blood- The Second Experience.

I had received in the mail a postcard from the Red Cross telling of dates and locations in Eagan to donate blood. My first thought was no- but I didn’t throw the card away. I even brought the postcard and announced it at small groups if anyone wanted to donate blood here is when and where they could do it- even though I still had no intention myself of giving blood.

Tuesday morning after I had gotten home from SNAP I was sitting down to do my devotions when the phone rang. It was a woman from the Red Cross asking if I would be willing to come in and donate. The woman was a little too pushy and I was quick to refute the requests. I started whipping out all the excuses just trying to get off the phone as fast as I could. Immediately after I hung up I felt disgusted with myself and how I had acted.

I have been reading this book in the morning called, “Taste and See” by John Piper and it is 140 short meditations. So basically they are about 2 pages long of thoughts, questions, ideas, or truths to chew on. That morning I had read about Christ’s sacrifice and how Christ did that for the glory of God- not for us. Saving us through His sacrifice was in a sense a mere means to glorify God. This is not to belittle His love for us, or what He did for us- but we constantly miss the point that it was first and foremost for God.

As I began to think about that reading, I realized how giving blood is a great symbolic act to remind ourselves of Christ’s sacrifice. I mean really- lets think about this here. We live in a country that has sterile needles to jab into our arms for about ten minutes, take out a pint of blood (which our body will reproduce in a few days) that could be put into three different people and ultimately save their lives. Lives that could change the world. Lives that would get a second chance to accept Christ. Lives that are a part of the body of Christ.

When I was defending my lack of action to the Red Cross lady on the phone, I was so focused on myself that I didn’t see the need.

I read 2 Chronicles 29 and it was a great application to my situation. The kings of 2 Chronicles that fall are so focused on themselves that they don’t see the needs of the people- idol worshipping hurts not helps.

The kings that restore order see the need for God to be glorified and restore the temple and its practices.

Christ sacrificed of himself to glorify the Father through saving humanity. Is not blood donation a symbolic act of that?

Is it not a blessing God has given us the ability to physically take of ourselves and give to another?

In 2 Chronicles 29, king Ahaz had destroyed the temple of the LORD with idol worshiping- when Hezekiah became king, he stepped in and changed all that. I am sure that it took a lot of Hezekiahs own money, time and energy to restore that temple, but when a child of God sees His temple being destroyed- shouldn’t we jump to fix it- no matter what the cost, knowing it will impact/revive the people for Christ?

And now that our bodies are the temple- same thing- it may take out own money, time, and effort to get that person back on track, but it will be worth it because its God’s temple being restored for His glory. THEREFORE- if we should restore the temples of God we should give to the poor, help those who fall away, give our time, money, energy, and BLOOD.

I again saw the postcard. I signed up online. I donated blood.

The cool thing about giving blood- is you have no idea who it will ever go to. Which in my opinion makes it easier to focus on doing it for the glory of Christ than a specific person because you have no idea! All we can do is give blood and pray it makes it to the person who needs it most spiritually.

As I had a short time to prepare mentally for giving blood (not a big fan of it- makes me REALLY nervous) I prayed that God would be most glorified. Through studying Paul- I have learned that that is a scary prayer to pray because God more times than not is most glorified through out discomfort than our comfort. As soon as those words left my mouth I knew this experience would not be smooth sailing.

I had the joy (yes joy, I am not being sarcastic) of almost passing out, feeling very uncomfortable and weak, but it will not stop me from going back again. I only lost a pint and they had me lie there a long time until I felt stable enough to just sit up- how did Christ walk, let alone carry his cross after losing so much more?

My hope and prayer in all of this is that when I am in heaven someone will approach me and say, “Thank you for donating blood because I received that blood and through that gained not only physical life, but as well as a life in Christ Jesus.”

realizations

First I encourage you all to read this blog post:
http://africalu.blogspot.com/2009/03/when-goin-gets-tough-tough-gets-goin.html

Wow- I don’t even know where to begin with this story. It just reminds me of my senior project and how we seem to forget we are all human. Why is that? Why do we disregard people around the world as if they for some reason do not deserve the same acknowledgement as ourselves?

I love when the Olympics are going on. I am one who will sit and watch every country walk into the stadium at the opening ceremonies. It is so beautiful to me to see all these different kinds of people with different fashion styles, different faces, hair color, eye color, mannerisms, languages, everything is different but yet everything is the same. As a WORLD we forget about all the fighting and disagreements and enter into one stadium as one world. To me the Olympics is a glimpse of heaven when we all will stand before an awesome God as one body, with one purpose.

We think being American is some sort of pass to anything unjust or unfair. That when faced with a difficult or uncomfortable situation that saying, “well I’m American” will radically change what happens. I admire Lulu’s honesty in her writing and most likely would have felt the same way. Sometimes I wish I was not born in America. Not born in a country that is viewed as being so blessed with all its accommodations, but in fact it is blinded because of them. Blinded to what it truly means to depend on a Mighty God for food, shelter, and hope that this life is worth living. But I must not question Gods placing- its like Lulu said, “I don't know why I was born somewhere with so many accommodations... but I do know that everything I have received needs to be given back two fold to others without.” I cannot let me bitterness keep me from giving from the abundance I have been placed in.


All of this has reminded me of my current investigation of bees. Bees work as a hive, as a team and share their good findings with others and communicate to one another by dancing! How romantic…bees communicate that there is food, there is hope, there is a chance to survive another day through dance. As Americans we should constantly be dancing with those that are in need because we should be sharing our good findings. We can give hope, we can show them that there is a chance to survive another day. Americans view of survival is being as comfortable and efficient as possible. The definition of survival reads:
the state or fact of continuing to live or exist, typically in spite of an accident, ordeal, or difficult circumstances.

• Psalm 150:4 (ESV) "Praise him with tambourine and dance; praise him with strings and pipe!"

• Ecclesiastes 3:4 (ESV) "...a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;..."

• Jeremiah 31 (ESV) Read

Do we know what it means to survive? Do we know what it means to live simple?

Being in art school we are consistently told, “find a style, create a body of work, get your name out there…” its tiring and daunting because I have never felt like I would find a style, and I have not desire to get MY name out there. Through the process of creating my senior show I have realized what I would like to accomplish as an artist. I want my art to speak of something bigger than myself; I desire it to cause people to take action on issues that are affecting our world. I would rather people walk away from my art talking about how they can help than the aesthetics of my art.

As Josh and I begin to talk about our future- we keep going back to the book “Crazy Love” that we just recently read together. It speaks about not letting ourselves get into the typical American rut of living out our faith in a lukewarm fashion. Christ called all of us to live the radical life. It is not something Josh and I need to wait to do when we are married- we, like so many other Christians, need to reignite the fire and live by the Word.

A cute find!

I ran across this little picture when I was searching for visual inspiration online for my last drawing III project. I have kept it on my desktop and open it up to look at it every so often just to get a good smile.