Your Art Matters

I’ve always been a word nerd. I still believe that words matter and have the ability to change the world for the better.

Writing is my creative outlet. I can’t draw anything to save my life. I don’t have a musical bone in my body (although there was that one attempt in middle school band with a trumpet, but that’s a memory better left in the past).

For a long time, I didn’t think that my love of words had any value and that I couldn’t really do anything with it. I was always hesitant to even call myself a writer, because if I did, that meant that I was actually committing myself to the practice of stringing words together in a coherent way.

I’ve found that writing, at least for me, can be one of the most incredibly frustrating yet overwhelmingly freeing experiences. It’s how I make sense of life and connect with my Creator. It’s been said that writing is like praying with a keyboard. I couldn’t agree more.

For me, writing is my art. It matters. It’s how I grow. It’s how I communicate the goodness and grace of God to my world.

What about you? What’s your art? What’s the thing that you do that, when you’re doing it, you feel fully alive and are able to point people to an incredible God?

Maybe you’re a painter, a photographer, a builder, a composer, a biologist, a teacher, a businessperson, a filmmaker, or a [fill in the blank].

The next time you start to think that you’re not really qualified to pursue your art or that it doesn’t matter, don’t be afraid to push back against that resistance.

Your art matters. It matters because it’s how you grow. It matters because it helps you better understand the love of God. It matters because the world is hungry for art that has significance and that points to something bigger.

Gary Molander suggests that “you don’t need to create art for God. He doesn’t need it. You need to create art in response to God. The world needs it.”

Your art matters. Now go create it.