Welcome to Buoy, a Life in Deeper Water podcast. Episode 10. A Good Year for the Unseen: The God of Divine Craftsmanship
(A 3-part series on filling your 2023 earthly life with heavenly treasures.)
(click here to listen)
Hello human.
If you missed the first post in this series, Beautiful Earthly Things, we are considering how to leverage our human affinity for treasuring earthly things to seeking heavenly treasures in this life. Longing to know our Creator and answer His call by “His own glory and goodness”—more in our earthly lives than that which we can see, touch, hear, smell, buy, sell, trade and accumulate. Seeking signature qualities of treasuring—craftmanship, aesthetic, efficiency, and style.
Does God care about craftsmanship? Let’s ask Moses.
First, I had to refresh my understanding of what happened in Exodus beyond leaving Egypt for the Promised Land. The Israelites are delivered from slavery in Biblical Egypt by God (Yahweh), who has chosen them as his people. The Israelites journey with the prophet Moses to Mount Sinai, where Yahweh gives the 10 commandments and they enter into a covenant with Yahweh, who promises to make them a “holy nation, and a kingdom of priests” on condition of their faithfulness.
Do you know this story? Moses descending the mountain with two huge, what look-to-be very heavy stone tablets. Tablets with a Yahweh to do list of divine proportion. If He has chosen the Israelites as his people, what does that relationship look like?
I try to picture being on that mountain watching Moses come down, how I would respond to God’s presence in that moment. I had never really thought about how this is God’s foundational first steps in establishing His relationship with a nation of people. I think I was stuck on the stone tablets and Moses’ TV hair.
How should this chosen people act? 10 simple commandments on how to love, honor and act toward God, and each other.
How should they worship? God gives them their laws and instructions to build the Tabernacle. God intended the Israelites to have a tabernacle where He would dwell among the people in a special way. The details in Exodus, i.e., God’s instructions to Moses are extraordinary. The ark, the altars, the incense, the covenant, the tent, all of it. God prepares by His own hand Bezalel for the tabernacle’s artistry, attending to every detail, every skill brought to bear through the workers he selected.
The Master Craftsman has the Blueprint
Listen to what God told Moses, His blueprint, attention to detail and His craft:
31 Then the Lord said to Moses, 2 “See, I have chosen Bezalel son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, 3 and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with wisdom, with understanding, with knowledge and with all kinds of skills— 4 to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver and bronze, 5 to cut and set stones, to work in wood, and to engage in all kinds of crafts. 6 Moreover, I have appointed Oholiab, son of Ahisamak, of the tribe of Dan, to help him. Also I have given ability to all the skilled workers to make everything I have commanded you: 7 the tent of meeting, the ark of the covenant law with the atonement cover on it, and all the other furnishings of the tent— 8 the table and its articles, the pure gold lampstand and all its accessories, the altar of incense, 9 the altar of burnt offering and all its utensils, the basin with its stand— 10 and also the woven garments, both the sacred garments for Aaron the priest and the garments for his sons when they serve as priests, 11 and the anointing oil and fragrant incense for the Holy Place. They are to make them just as I commanded you.” Exodus 31:1-11
No wonder God is sovereign. Ours is a God of divine detail, the master of craftsmanship. He created Bezalel, the artist in charge with a spiritual way about him. It was Bezalel’s purpose to execute his Maker’s inspiration through his spirit-ordained human craft. Craftsmanship: The paying attention. Executing on every detail. Investing in and relentlessly executing your talent. Losing self completely in the craft of the creative process.
The Glory and Goodness of God In My Field
God’s actions to build a relationship with His people, and a tabernacle in which to nurture that relationship, a place of worship and sacrifice, is an earthly model of what it means to live in the Kingdom of God. He wants us to know Him deeply.
The Kingdom of God is the treasure buried in our field. Remember the field we find, buy, hide, and return to once we have sold everything. Our field is where we know God and love Him deeply. When we make loving Him precious, we prepare ourselves to live in His house with many mansions.
Look to creation for the treasure of knowing God deeply.
“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. … So they have no excuse for not knowing God. Romans 1:20
God said that.
Psalm 19:1
The heavens are telling of the glory of God;
And their expanse is declaring the work of His hands.
We are to see God’s invisible qualities in nature. He says we have no excuse for not knowing God. That what he has made represents His eternal power and divine nature.
I certainly have no excuse. It is easy to look around every day and see God. The nature surrounding my earthly home is stunning, wild and autonomous from anything I do. For anyone who has experienced any ocean—and my beloved Atlantic—in a turbulent state, it is the closest I come to feeling the presence of God in my earthly life, being drawn into the greatness of His sovereign presence. A God that has control beyond all understanding. On some days, a beach walk along the Outer Banks has me listening to it but avoiding eye contact. I am so drawn to the force and momentum of the swell. It’s that powerful. So much so, I have a hard time looking at the wave over wave straight on. I strain to see how far out the wave started, but I have come to accept that I can’t know that.
After all, we are God’s earthlings for a while, yet. We seek God’s distant swell, the power source that sends the swell hundreds of miles inland to our personal, spiritual shore. But how?
I need to make eternity precious. I need to be an extravagant steward of eternity. Treasure eternity in my heart.We are told that eternity lives in the human heart but we cannot understand it.
11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet[a] no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. Ecclesiastes 3:11
Wait. What? It would seem I have been wired with eter-nology I wasn’t aware I had. God has wired me for my journey with divine GPS. My heavenly destination lives in my heart. I do not care if I do not understand it.
My field is loving God deeply.
A Sense of Style
We do not thrive by self-inspiration. We thrive from the Master Artist, our sovereign Savior. Our Creator. TheCreator. God has created the world and us in His image, and we each have spiritual gifts that He has molded into our unique nature for a specific life purpose.
I have a way about me. A divine style fashioned by the hand of God. You have a way about you. A style that only you can pull off with authenticity.
10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Ephesians 2:10
Seek heavenly treasures through the good works God prepared in advance for us to do.
God’s craftsmanship, his workmanship to create our nature:
God has filled us, like Bezalel, with “the Spirit of God, with wisdom, with understanding, with knowledge and with all kinds of skills.”
The God of divine craftsmanship is crafting my relationships, creating a beautiful spiritual aesthetic that contains in each moment of my life the efficiency of being “enough” to give me fulfillment and peace. Efficiency: Striking the tenuous balance of form and function at the summit of “enough.” Stopping short of excess. Creative energy that doesn’t overshoot the mark.
He does this in such a way that only I can do, if I follow in the footsteps of His Son. A one of a kind Savior.
We have so much to look forward to. Earth is not our destination. But it is through our “good works” that we see God’s craftsmanship in our witness, that we pursue our heavenly treasures on earth.
Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. – Matthew 6:19-21
The Bible contains numerous lists of positive character qualities to read, pray over, ponder, worship with…. an abundance of guidance which is why I am committed to sharing my witness with you 99 times.
Here is one:
2 Peter 1:5-8
5 For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; 6 and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; 7 and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. 8 For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Spiritual Discipline to Create a Divine Aesthetic
There is a spiritual discipline to creating a divine aesthetic. It was done once when Jesus walked on earth. Filling each moment with God’s Will, perfectly timed and scaled to God’s intent. Jesus personified efficacy and efficiency. Listening, teaching, praying, admonishing in love in perfect spiritual proportion. Building a spiritual character that was pleasing to His Heavenly Father. Aesthetic: Creating something not seen before, capturing the maker’s inspiration. Igniting an unexplained celebration in the admirer’s heart. A divine pleasing.
When I was commuting from Los Angeles to Orange County, for about two years, I listened to John Macarthur, a widely-known pastor-teacher, author based in Sun Valley, California who has a Grace to You radio ministry. In my recent reading in preparation for my witness revelation in this episode John says this most beautiful thing: “Truly excellent character is actually a reflection of the moral nature of God Himself. For that reason, all virtues are interdependent and closely related. And all of them are the fruit of God’s grace. As you study biblical virtue, may you perceive the true beauty of Christ’s character and desire to see it reproduced in your own life.”
So… for each of us, the journey back to our Creator, the journey to knowing Him, began on a bed of straw. A baby who would become THE SEEN with every breath in His earthly life to show us how precious our Heavenly Father is. THE UNSEEN.
Holy. Heavenly. Treasure. On earth.
His grace. My gratitude.
See ya on the Buoy.
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You can find me at kathrynbise.com and @buoykathrynb on Instagram.
Buoy is a Life in Deeper Water podcast.