This and That and...Love

Thank you Julie Fei-Fan Balzer for selecting one of my art journal pages from the Art Journal Every Day Flickr pool and posting it on your blog on Friday.

 http://balzerdesigns.typepad.com.  

It was such a thrill to visit her blog, as I do each Friday, and find some of my art!

I've been in kind of an art slump since I went on my personal retreat a few weeks ago. I have the desire, I just don't seem to have any ideas or creativity lately. I don't know if the heat has something to do with it. I HATE heat and humidity. It zaps my energy and about all I want to do is read or watch movies. Well, hopefully the heat and my art slump will pass soon. I did make a page spread the other day in my altered book art journal.

I'm reading a book called "Repenting of Religion: Turning From Judgment to the Love of God" by Gregory Boyd. This book is blowing me away! We are going through the book of 1 John in our worship service on Sundays and as I study John's letter for our Creative Team meetings each week, I find that Gregory Boyd's writing is going right along with our study. Our prayer for our church as we move through 1 John is that we would connect experientially with God's great love for us and His call on us to love others, Boyd calls this love God has for us "unsurpassable".

John says, "This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters." 1 John 3:16.  This is the verse we will focus on this coming Sunday as we seek to define Biblical love. This verse begins the heart of John's message about love (3:16-5:2) and our plan is to slow down in the weeks ahead and take this message in.

From Gregory Boyd:

"Everything we are in Christ, and thus everything we are called to be in Christ, is summed up in the word love. The central defining truth of the believer is that in Christ God ascribed unsurpassable worth to us, though we did not deserve it. Hence, the central defining mark of disciples of Christ is that they in turn ascribe unconditional worth to themselves and all others, knowing that Christ died for them as well." (He then quotes 1 John 3:16).

Everything we are and everything we are called to  - in Christ - is summed up in the word LOVE.

I look forward to what God is going to do in me and in our church as we go through the rest of 1 John (and as I go through the rest of Boyd;s book).