| I remember the first time that someone saw me as a writer. It was my elementary school teacher who wrote a rave review about a short story I had written and proclaimed that I was good at this thing. It was encouraging, but a part of me felt newfound pressure to keep being good at it. It’s a human instinct to want to prove ourselves, but it can quickly take a gift or talent and turn it into a performance and derail our sense of joy. As Christians, we bring into our vocation the work of the Holy Spirit. How does my effort actually influence eternity? How am I guided by him in whatever it is that I’ve got before me? This isn’t only a creative problem. Some of us are accountants or caregivers or teachers or programmers. But all of us face the same desire to hold it up and ask, “Is this enough?” In “What Is the Holy Spirit’s Role in Art?”, Sara Groves opens up about her creative process. As a songwriter, she struggles with these big questions as well, and she shares the wisdom she’s gleaned from her decades of writing. Groves was one of the first artists to challenge me to bring God into the simple moments in my day, and it shaped my worldview profoundly. In this article, she reminds us that creating isn’t all our talent or only God’s orchestrating. Rather, he partners with us in the task at hand. In Groves’s words, “Not less of me, more of God; but all of me, all of God—a profound mystery.” “This reminds me of the words of Sandra McCracken in her piece “The Gospel Work of Song,” in which she writes, “We lift our voices as God is restoring our relationships and our stories, and he keeps on giving us new songs to sing.” He is the one who gives us redemption and ways to express it. Each of us can tell the story of the gospel in the context we’re placed in. Here’s hoping that this week we can take whatever it is we do and give our full selves to the work of using it to build the Kingdom. | 