It's Time to Do Your Work.

Listening to Josh Garrels brings me to tears. He stirs deep places in me because, I think, his music stirs deep places in him, and it’s contagious.

I heard him say once, that music, created to honor the Creator of all Things, should sound like nothing we’ve ever heard before. It’s his guiding principle.

I agree. Our art should reflect Jesus - wild and necessary, like an undersea earthquake that shifts our depths and erupts, altering, maybe even wrecking everything on our surface, with landslides and waves of surrender to something bigger and more powerful than we could ever dare hope or imagine.

Here are some links to Josh’s work. They’re worth your time.

I’m telling you this because I’ve picked my word for 2019 and I’m excited about it. Plus, I want the earth to quake under your feet this year too, even if it means uncertainty, anxiety and letting your topography crack, so the God who created you and the aurora borealis, can rock your world, and that of those around you.

MY WORD FOR 2019 IS FREEDOM.

Radical, fearless, hair-on-fire FREEDOM because it’s for freedom that He set me free, so what am I waiting for?

My word for 2018 was COURAGE, but I didn’t know that to have its full expression, COURAGE had to meet FEAR head-on, which I spent every waking and most sleeping hours of 2018 doing. I’m not going to lie, it sucked.

But the valleys are where the water is, so if your word for 2019 unleashes total havoc in your safe and settled life, but helps you create work that is worthy of the One who created you, then….

TRUST IT.

“But I don’t knowwwwwww what my work is,” I hear you moan.

Yes you do.

The work you see someone else doing on Instagram, which secretly makes you seethe with jealousy, don’t dismiss that. Pay attention, it’s a street sign on your path. The pitiable “I just don’t know” story is a lie.

ALL YOU NEED TO DO IS BEGIN.

When Josh Garrels sat down to write Ulysses, I doubt he knew where he was going with it, but Abraham didn’t know where he was going either. God just told him to start walking and he did.

WHERE DO YOU NEED TO START WALKING?

I suspect you have an idea, because I’m writing this for you - artist to artist. Why can I call us that? Because we are created in the image of The Creator who makes sunrises out of lavender and tangerine and somehow it all works. Good art, original art, stills our minds and builds holy steam somewhere deep inside us.

It’s time to make YOUR thing. You’re the only who can do it, and we’re waiting. So sit down and do the work. Deal with the old stories and the liar who says you can’t.

You can. Just start and keep going.