Why…

Write? 

Create?

Speak?

Sing?

Paint?

Draw?

Film?

Shape?

We ______ to express ourselves.

Why should we express ourselves?

Because we want to share with the world what we value most.

Why should we share with the world what we value most?

Because it fulfills our unique sense of purpose.

Why should we seek our sense of purpose?

Because we are “created in Christ Jesus for good works…that we should walk in them” (Eph 2:10).

I was the sixteen-year-old who gasped when my friend tattooed Winnie the Pooh to her pelvic bone. All I could picture was her eighty-year-old frame and a saggy, wrinkled bear waving a red balloon.

But now I’m a little different.

I like tattoos.

Was out the other night and saw a mesmerizing one from across the room. The lighting was dim, so at first I couldn’t make out more than a kaleidoscope of hues. But as I moved closer, the colors wrote themselves into, RUINED FOR LESS. I rarely remember Scripture references, so if it weren’t for this phrase being in the Acknowledgements of my first book, I would've missed it.

But I did.

In Isaiah 6, the prophet describes a radical experience of coming face to face with God. “Woe to me, for I am ruined,” he said, aghast that the majesties of God chose to intersect with him. And never again, he implies, may we be ruined by anything less.

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