With this article in mind I began the search looking for the arts
within Africa. With so many diverse cultures and distinctive
lifestyles I thought that the pool of creativity would stretch from
Cape to Cairo, but I was left despondent to find repetitive western
recreations. So in all this disappointment God began to bring some
light to my ideologies about the arts. So to start this section off I
thought I would leave you with what God began to show me.

Isn’t it strange that the word of God says, “All the trees of the
field shall clap their hands” yet I’m still to find such a tree that
has such hands, or by some surprising moment I walk past a rock and it
gives off the loudest shout of praise that it rattles my inner bones.
For the word of God says that the “very rocks shall give Him praise.”
How is it that we cannot hear these trees or rocks yet they naturally
use the arts to give our Lord praise?

Is this thought startling, or do we really know what the “arts” are
all about. Now I don’t have some crazy or astonishing philosophy that
if you close your eyes and jump three times with a twist at the end
that you would be able to hear the trees applaud in great splendour
before their Maker. What I do have is this, a question: What does God
consider to be “the arts?”

I’ve seen and been apart of so many different dances, plays and
Christian festivals so I am not bringing down anything or trying to
break what Christians have done. What I am saying is this, the arts
cannot be confined within a three minute song or a high end audio
visual production, for the fact that the arts should be a natural
everyday movement and sound that echoes from the core of our very
heart with the desire to only please our wonderful Father. A tree is a
tree everyday of the year and a rock is a rock and does what a rock
does through snow, rain and sunshine.

Maybe I’m not being that clear. A couple of weeks ago I took a trip
down to the coast to visit my parents, and at a point in the journey
there are these magnificent tree farms packed to the brim with pine
trees. At that moment God dropped this in my spirit, as much as man
tries to line up every tree and make everything ordered, the farmer
cannot control how they look, sway and smell. Even in mans order every
tree is a different size and shape, yet they all do the same thing,
they all clap, all sway to the same wind, all fashioned for one
purpose. Man tries to give it a purpose (selling the trees to make a
profit) but even in that they still give God praise and clap their
hands. Still not getting where I’m going with this?

Could it be that our outer movements and scripted portraits are flawed
by the indifference in our inner core, and worst of all we judge the
worth of an artistic making by its visual delight and soothing sound.
Now I’m using these elongated words and eccentric lines to expose our
overdosed phrases that conceal the truth within our fickle beings.
Still confused? Let me speak plainly.

We are created with arts weaved in our making, it is who we are, we
cannot change it. Where we fall short is that we limit it to our outer
being and ability. We base it on what we have been taught and not what
God has breathed into us, our uniqueness. We have confined ourselves
to the same movements and thought patterns that our music and
productions smell, feel and taste the same. Let me take it a little
further where it touches home, we shun all that shouts difference, and
we may not say it in words but our actions and lifestyles break the
creativity of the Holy Spirit because we cannot move away from our
traditional freedom and religious liberty.

Now if you still have not got what I’m trying to say, I’ll finish with
this. As Christians we can take it to the next level. Let the arts not
be based upon outer action but birthed from inner love for our King,
not to be tainted by the outside but to be expressed freely through
whatever medium needed. And I mean every medium, from the craziest
music to the most ridiculous idea or platform. Not to be limited by
resource, ability or what the world is doing but to be peculiar and do
something the way our Maker would, without limits