Roots

God is redeemer of past, present and future, and this week, God produced fruit from desires that were in the rearview mirror.

A homeschool group at our church has been hosting casual meetups where the kids are given some free creative and socialization time, and we've been talking through what an art workshop day might look like for one of these meetups. They joined us on our last Miami mission trip, and Brad, the father of the family who's hosting the meetups, is a long time wood carver; we had a great time hosting a VBS camp in Miami, and when I found out he was a carver, I admitted that in college I really wanted to learn how to carve myself. Woodcarving can be a rather prolific art form, as you can find workable lumber pretty easily.

He invited me over to go through some basics with him, and I was excited about the opportunity; we never got to work with wood when I was training for sculpture work. It'd be great to implement woodworking into our curriculum, but aside from that, it was a great excuse to spend time with a family I truly enjoy hanging out with; the core value of this ministry lies in the unique opportunities art presents to build relationships, so this is exactly the kind of work I pray we find ourselves always engaged in.

We also officially finished our first community mural this week! We set out to complete a mural at the EpiCenter for the youth game room, and during our initial discussion, our pastor brought up the idea of a Mario themed mural that would incorporate some of the electrical piping into the design work. The idea was to paint the piping green, to resemble the warp pipes famous to Mario games. Seeing the glossy matt painting of the wall, I was taken back to the hours I used to spend as a kid playing the Super Mario All Stars battle game with my cousins; the background of the stage was black, warp pipes would jut in from the sides of the stages, and the colors were a little more vibrant than the classic 8-bit Mario on NES.

Mural work was something I aspired to in college, but this was before I had met the Lord; it was an aspiration full of what Paul calls the lust of the eyes and pride of life. The idea of glorifying the Lord through mural work had been popping up insistently throughout our last couple of mission trips, however, and though a Mario stage may not exactly be dripping with biblical revelation, it'll add some charm and life to a room that the youth use to host bible studies as well as hang out and play games together. Below are a couple of snapshots of the completed mural.

To top it off, we landed in Miami for our second mission trip this year; Miami is where I was born and raised, which puts me in a place of a lot of memories that are sometimes difficult to reconcile with the many new things that the Lord is doing in my life.

What I'm discovering about ministry this week is that the Lord can redeem a past of weakness to strengthen the future impact of our work; ministry is made up of individuals, and we all have a past full of sin that Jesus saved us from. Once that past is handed over to the Lord, and you surrender to His redemptive work, He will use that past to build relationships that will allow you to minister in ways that are unique to your own history - how, for example, could I minister to artists without the many outright-stupid 'artist mistakes' I've made in my own past? How will I be able to relate to what they're going through?