Sunday, June 25, 2006
Summary of Trotter's Pursuit of God and Art
On an online forum, a sister in Christ named Colleen Tinker shared this...
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I am reading a book by Noel Piper (wife of John Piper) called "Faithful Women and Their Extraordinary God". In her biographical sketch of Lilias Trotter, a woman who spent most of her life (aged 30 on) ministering to Muslims in Algiers during the last part of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th. Lilias was a gifted artist and the renowned English artist John Ruskin offered to take her as a pupil when she was in her 20s.
Lilias was pursuing both her art and an inner city ministry in London during those years, and Ruskin became frustrated with her for not concentrating more on her painting. She was spending too much time, he felt, on the streets of London. He finally laid it all out in front of her and said that if she would devote herself to perfecting her painting, "she would be the greatest living painter and do things that would be immortal."
Lilias agonized for day, praying for God to make it clear to her what her calling was. She loved her art (after all, it was a God-given talent), and she knew God could use her influence as a Christ-follower for the Kingdom through that sphere. But in the end she wrote in her journal, "I see as clear as daylight now, I cannot give myself to painting in the way [Ruskin] means and continue still to 'seek first the Kingdom of God and His Righteousness'."
She chose to continue to enjoy her art "as a gift, not a passion," and she threw herself completely into her ministry to which she knew God was calling her.
Years later she wrote this, "Never has it been so easy to live in half a dozen good harmless worlds at once—-Art, music, social science, games, motoring, the folowing of some profession, and so on. And between them we run the risk of drifting about, the 'good' hiding the 'best.'...
"it is easy to find out whether our lives are focussed, and if so, where the focus lies. Where do our thoughts settle when consciousness comes back in the morning? Where do they swing back when the pressure is off during the day?...Dare to have it out with God...and ask Him to show you whether or not all is focussed on Christ and His glory..
"How do we bring things to a focus in the world of optics? Not by looking at the things to be dropped, but by looking at the one point that is to be brought out. Turn your soul's vision to Jesus, and look and look at Him, and a strange dimness will come over all that is apart from Him."
# posted by Ramone @ 9:38 PM 
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