Life Notes—September 6, 2012
“For he knows how we were made; he remembers that we are dust.” Psalm 103:14
I do not consider myself a hoarder of emails. My goal in Inbox Maintenance is to read an email and then quickly do something with it: respond, forward, file or delete. My personal email account has 25 or so items, my work account may be double that. Obviously, I keep the current items awaiting some sort of action on my part. I hold onto reminders of bills due or calendar events I may want to reference nearer their date. There are a handful of items I need to spend significant time with, waiting for their time to arrive. Finally, there is a very small collection of emails I simply cannot bring myself to delete. These are items so precious and so moving that I know I will want to revisit them many times over. The oldest such item in my Inbox contains this link: http://constantwanderlust.tumblr.com/post/162278233/bauldoff-kseniya-simonova-is
Kseniya Simonova is a young artist from Ukraine. The link was sent to us in 2009 by a friend who knew we were about to host an exchange student from Ukraine. In this video, Ms. Simonova creates and recreates a sand animation inspired by the Eastern European experience of World War II. When you have nine minutes of uninterrupted and quiet time, I encourage you to go to the link and prepare to be deeply moved. If you’ve seen it already, it may be worth another look.
What this young lady does with sand, a horizontal white board and her fingers is nothing short of an earthly illustration of creation itself. She molds and shapes and destroys and rebuilds. Her characters go through pain and joy, tragedy and redemption, defeat and resurrection. And all the characters and all the buildings and the light and the dark and the many moods and seasons and feelings all rise and fall from the very same grains of sand, shaped and reshaped by the creator’s fingertips. We see the many years and scenes pass by as if a generation has been fast-forwarded on a video player. The human creative process has many manifestions, most of which are either two or three dimensional. Ms. Siminova’s creation, like that of the Creator of all life, additionally takes us through time, making it other-dimensional. By the way, I am told what she writes in the sand at the very end is, “You are always next to me.” It is amazing what a talented artist can do with sand and light. It is awe-inspiring what our divine Creator has done with a little dust…
Tom continues his sermon series on the book of James downtown this Sunday, where Life worship is at 10:00 AM in Brady Hall, traditional worship is at 8:30 and 11:00. Mitch continues his series on All-Star Animals of the Bible at the west campus, where contemporary worship is at 9:00 and 11:00.
Come home to church this Sunday. Come, rejoice in your ‘dustfulness’ with us!
Greg Hildenbrand, Life Music Coordinator
Contemplating Grace 