Observing Our Ordinary Days: Reflections on Our Art Show

We live in a culture that asks, almost reflexively, what something is for. But a cross-stitch of a Melbourne laneway, or a photograph of daily medication, or a digital poster of flowers earns its place simply by existing. You can't sell them as a solution to a problem. No spreadsheet would categorise them as useful, and that’s the point.

Jacques Ellul once warned that Western culture had become captive to technique, to the relentless question of efficiency. Under that kind of pressure, anything that can't justify itself by its output gets pushed to the margins. But the things we pushed to the margins this month, the small watercolours, the sketches, even the wobbly first attempts by children who'd never shown their work before, were the truest things in the room. Emily Dickinson wrote in dashes that made no grammatical sense and was largely ignored in her lifetime. Vincent van Gogh sold almost nothing. What the world once overlooked, later generations value as priceless.

Art has always sat close to the heart of faith, even when the church has been suspicious of it. God is complete in himself, sufficient without us and without the universe he spoke into being. He made anyway, out of the overflow of his own generous nature. Genesis calls it “good”, a richer and more beautiful word than "useful". Paul writes in his letter to the Colossians that all things were created through Christ and for him, an act of abundance rather than a supply he lacked.

When we stitch an image of an eggplant because its shape and colour speak to us, when we paint two young brothers embracing, we do something closer to worship than we might realise. We are joining, in our small way, the God who creates out of love rather than need. That's what co-creation means: an invitation, by grace, into the same generous instinct that made the world in the first place, not an addition to anything God lacks.

During the day, when the general public came in to look at the show, people made all kinds of interesting observations. For some, coming into a church/gallery was a step towards transcendence. Lamentations tells us that God's mercies are new every morning; our art show helped people slow down to taste God’s mercies. 

A Spirit-filled life should spill out into how a community sees its own street, not stay locked inside individual hearts while the culture around it stays anxious and distracted. Love, joy and peace are meant to be visible, not just felt (Galatians 5:22-23). This show was one small, faithful attempt at that kind of visibility.

A huge thanks goes to every artist who hung something on our walls; thank you for your courage. Showing your ordinary days to a room full of people takes real nerve. To everyone who came, looked, lingered and talked, thank you for treating attention as worth your time.

We're being drawn towards something new, something God is still making, rather than back towards some perfected past. Our ordinary days are somehow part of it. May we keep noticing them.