-the work of a skilled craftsman-

I will be the first to admit that art seems like the least important of things I could do with my time.  It feels self-serving and, some days, narcissistic and valueless.  Like shouting into the void.  Particularly as a Christian.  I can't shake the feeling from when I was a kid that art just wasn't something that God wanted or had any use for.

As an adult, in a very different kind of church, I have heard all of the teachings on artists being leaders in society and it therefore being important to have followers of Jesus in the arts; the teachings on art as a form of worship; and the teachings on the creative spirit of God being expressed through the artist.  None of that ever connected with me, and, honestly, I'm not ever planning to make preachy art or art specifically about God or done in a time of worship (which in my mind implies a time without critique).....so, why, as a Christian, is art as worth my time as many of the other things I do?  After all, even going to work has a more biblical basis.

Then I remembered the temple and the tabernacle.  When I read the Bible through for the first time, I made myself read the temple plans-- each and every time they occur-- and the instructions for the tabernacle word for word.  I was blown away by the phrase 'the work of a skilled craftsman'.  I'm not sure how many times that phrase occurs (and phrases naming specific crafts like perfumers, embroiders etc.) in Exodus, but every time, it indicates something made well, something beautiful, and something that God deemed necessary.  He named artists of the day specifically, over and over again.

At the beginning of the text, the Lord says to Moses, 'I have given skill to all the craftsmen to make everything I have commanded you.' (Exodus 31:6)  I don't know what I want to make, what I should make, or even if I have been commanded to make anything.  But I know the Lord and how He often works in people.  I think it unlikely He meant 'I have supernaturally endowed these people right now with heretofore unknown skills which they have never practice and now I would like them to use those skills for the first and only time to make something important, you know just a little bit important like the dwelling place of Most Holy God.'  I find it much more likely that He meant He had provided these skills for the craftsmen over a lifetime, shaping them to be ready for this significant task through practice and hard work-- in a sense, destining them for it.

Even Jesus practiced a craft this way: carpentry, learning how wood works and how to bend it to your will (in a natural way) is not quick or easy.  (btw how cool would it be to have been descended from someone in Nazareth and get to tell all your friends, 'Oh, yeah, the kitchen table?  Yeah, it's cool.  My great-great-great-great.....grandmother's neighbor made it.  Yeah, his name was Jesus.  It's no big thing.')

So maybe practicing my craft should take a higher priority.  Maybe not maybe.  Maybe for sure.  Because God can use it--He, after all, values beauty too.