arts in the church

It doesn't take very long to see that God is visual, God is creative, God inspires beauty; it washes over me like a warm, sunny waterfall. I am sitting in a light-drenched hotel room coated in warm, natural hues of seafoam, lime, and burnt sienna in Southern California. I've decided I like Southern California a lot. It chases away any last thread of depression. Bright, inspiring colors, warm and happy images, lingering scents of flowers and this....this is everyday. And then there is the church I am visiting....arts are everywhere! Liturgical, Inspirational, Meditative....it relaxes and challenges and calls you to a more disciplined-more spirit led place. Arts in the church are critical, as much for the creative as for the analytical, the impulsive as for the steady and fixed, arts in the church expresses what the word, the conversation cannot. It brings context through images and ideas, calling the viewer to delight with a new thought, wrestle with a gripping translation, and worship, oh worship, the God who is unending and never beginning.....