Goodness Reflected
Have you ever had one of those strange moments in life where various facets of your world, which are normally separate, come into collision? Perhaps you run into an old elementary school teacher through your current place of employment. Or a person that you had fellowship with in Hawaii ends up moving to Michigan.
This past week, a friend/colleague of mine from 30+ yrs ago when I worked for the Coalition for Christian Outreach as a campus minister posted a video from CCO's very large multi-state, multi-campus conference called Jubilee. Jubilee is a fantastic conference where college students are invited to see the world through a Reformed worldview and wrestle with the fact that there is not one square inch that God does not look down upon and say, "that is mine" (quoting Abraham Kuyper). That my friend would share a video from the conference was not surprising, but what caught my eye was that the speaker was Dr. Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt, of Covenant College, the PCA's college, where Zoe currently attends and for whom Lisa works.
When two worlds collide like that you have to check it out, right? As I watched, I was drawn in by this fabulously interesting, wonderfully charming, talk. In it, Dr. Weichbrodt thoughtfully and graciously offers a study of a Dutch painting from the 1600s to illustrate some life-changing points about the grand Biblical story that starts in a garden, with men and women made to be makers. With her own style and imagination, she gives us eyes to see why it matters to be grounded in creation so that we can be creators. Why it matters that the Creator himself said “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” (Genesis 1:26). Listening to Dr. Weichbrodt, I found myself gaining my footing again in the goodness of our Creator God and ennobled to bear his likeness. Perhaps you too might gain some benefit?
Dr. Weichbrodt's book, by the way, is called "Redeeming Vision: A Christian Guide to Looking at and Learning from Art."