Be the Mouth-Piece

My dear friend Crystal - who has become a part of my family - always includes in her email as apart of her signature/sign-off at the bottom of her emails:
"The artist's function is perpetually to be the voice and conscience of his time.--Jose Limon"

Maybe Jose Limon did or did not realize the implications of his quote, but as for me - a Believer, Co-Creating with God in this God-Given life I realize that being an artist is being a mouth-piece of the Lord.  The Prophets written about in the Bible, people often refer to them as a mouth-piece of the Lord.   Let's be honest, the prophets...they were a bit weird.  I've shared this before and I'll say it again: in Ezekiel the Lord asked him to put on a show of sorts.
Ez. 5
“1. And you, O son of man, take a sharp sword. Use it as a barber's razor and pass it over your head and your beard. Then take balances for weighing and divide the hair. ² A third part you shall burn in the fire in the midst of the city, when the days of the siege are completed. And a third part you shall take and strike with the sword all around the city. And a third part you shall scatter to the wind, and I will unsheathe the sword after them. ³ And you shall take from these a small number and bind them in the skirts of your robe. ⁴ And of these again you shall take some and cast them into the midst of the fire and burn them in the fire. From there a fire will come out into all the house of Israel.
⁵ “Thus says the Lord God: This is Jerusalem..."

He wasn't using words, he wasn't in the closet of his home praying about this, Ezekiel had to actually go out in the middle of the city and put on this show.  It was a proclamation about the state of Jerusalem blatant rebellion and how the Lord was going to openly make an example of them to the nations around them because of their CONSTANT hundreds of years of rebellion.

Let's be honest, when you see an "artsy" person you often call them "artsy" because they're a little bit odd.   I can imagine how ODD/weird/artsy the local Jews must have viewed Ezekiel parading around chopping pieces of his beard around the city.

I think as artists and believers we are called to be the mouthpiece of the Lord to our culture and time we are in.  No matter how weird it is.  How opposite of the norm of the current culture, because those who lose their lives to what the world believes as "proper" will find their lives in eternal perspective with Christ.

It's difficult, it's frustrating, it's not always pleasant going against the grain of this culture.  People will accuse you of being judgmental, unloving, weird, ignorant, foolish.  Sometimes you'll need to speak back against those accusations in love, and sometimes you'll need to just smile and turn the other cheek.

The glory of it is, if we truly seek the Kingdom first in this and keep the overflowing, abundant, patient Love of the Lord central in our hearts, we can have peace in knowing that it will all pay off in the Grande Scheme, in the Big Picture of Eternity.  Because the fact is there is more than just this life that we live on this planet, we have something to look forward to and that's what we work towards and what we rest in.
Until then, Lord help me to be apart of the "foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose [this] weak [thing] of the world to shame the strong.   He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things - and the things that are not - to nullify the things that are, so that" not even I can boast before You.  Keep me bold in you alone. That I would "be bold & very courageous" to share who You Are, and don't let me forget "if the world hates [me]...it hated [you] first."  that I do not belong to this world.   But instead I MUST testify of who I am with and who I represent - Christ in me the hope of Glory.