Variety: Psalm 19:12-14
But who can discern their own errors? Forgive my hidden faults.
Keep your servant also from wilful sins may they not rule over me.
Then I will be blameless, innocent of great transgression.
May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart
be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. PSALM 19:12–14
Dr John Dennison from London Institute for Contemporary Christianity writes
It seems to me that a longing for God haunts the contemporary artist. For the past 300 or so years, artists have reached for words like ‘inspiration’ and ‘spiritual’ to explain aspects of art experience; indeed, some of these have been used to explain why artists might be special. We’re created as makers, as creatures who have a distinct calling to offer up to God the stuff of his world as the work of our hands. If this is true, then it makes sense that art-making might be ghosted by longing for God.
So, what is it like to practise art in God’s presence? The writer of Psalm 19 is very aware that the priestly office of voicing creation’s life before God is only possible with God’s help. God is the artist’s ‘Lord’, but also his or her security, the one who funds his or her freedom – ‘my redeemer’. Like many works of art, this song anticipates – indeed, longs for – Jesus, God with us.
It is through Jesus Christ that we are redeemed from sin and rescued from death. Faith in Jesus restores art to the communion with God that artists otherwise long for. Through Jesus and by the gift of the Holy Spirit, we can begin to take up the priestly office of voicing creation’s praise. The words of our mouths, the meditation of our hearts, and the making of our hands are now subject to a call to holiness, allowing all that we are and all that we make to be illuminated by Christ.
What does this look like? Well, it looks like honesty about sin and a readiness to accept God’s forgiveness. It entails an ever-deepening understanding of how God’s purposes need to shape and enable our art. It might also include a deepening understanding of the ways in which our art can go astray.
The daily expression of this is prayer: keeping company with God. Prayer is not the special preserve of the arts, but art surely needs prayer. It’s in prayer that intuitions are given warrant or chastened, inclinations given shape and made fruitful, and making laid open to God’s gifts.
How does the artist (or, by extension, anyone who seeks to let God shape their work) do this? Well, you learn, slowly, to let prayer infuse your whole art practice, from inspiration to exhibition and beyond. So, may the words of our mouths and our hearts’ meditations become pleasing in our Redeemer’s sight!