Adorning the Dark

  I highlighted much more of Andrew Peterson's Adorning the Dark than what appears below when I was reading it early this year, but these are the pieces that I wanted to share here. It is a work about art and 'a life work'; it is also about developing into who we are able to be, not just who we want to be. It deals with weaknesses that accompany strengths; it speaks of grace. It acted as a perfect complement to a book I'd read shortly before it, Tim Keller's Every Good Endeavor, which spoke of a biblical view of work more broadly and deeply. Adorning the Dark was like an illustration of one person's working out of those principles. Below I offer a few of the thoughts that I found meaningful or encouraging. 

Since we were made to glorify God, worship happens when someone is doing exactly what he or she was made to do. (p. 17). 

God, however, never takes his eyes off me, and on my good days I believe that he is smiling, never demanding an answer other than the fact of myself. I exist as his redeemed creation, and that is, pleasantly, enough for him. (p. 20). 

Dahl remembered what it was like to be a little boy. And he remembered that it is terrifying. It reminded me how vital it is that Christians bend low and speak tenderly to the children in our lives. These boys and girls at our churches, in our schools, down the street, are living a harrowing adventure. Every one of them falls into one of two categories: wounded, or soon-to-be-wounded. The depth and nature of those wounds will vary, but they’re all malleable souls in a world clanging with hammer blows. The bigger they get, the easier the target.

[...]

Those of us who write, who sing, who paint, must remember that to a child a song may glow like a nightlight in a scary bedroom. It may be the only thing holding back the monsters. That story may be the only beautiful, true thing that makes it through all the ugliness of a little girl’s world to rest in her secret heart. May we take that seriously. It is our job, it is our ministry, it is the sword we swing in the Kingdom, to remind children that the good guys win, that the stories are true, and that a fool’s hope may be the best kind. (p. 106). 

I’ll probably always be self-conscious, so the battle to make something out of nothing at all will rage on, and I’ll have to fight it in the familiar territory of selfishness until the Spirit winnows my work into something loving and lovable. I’m no longer surprised by my capacity for self-doubt, but I’ve learned that the only way to victory is to lose myself, to surrender to sacredness—which is safer than insecurity. I have to accept the fact that I’m beloved by God. That’s it. Compared to that, the songs don’t matter so much—a realization which has the surprising consequence of making them easier to write. (p. 26). 

All you really have is your willingness to fail, coupled with the mountain of evidence that the Maker has never left nor forsaken you. (p. 34). 

Either you’re willing to steward the gift God gave you by stepping into the ring and fighting for it, or you spend your life in training, cashing in excuse after excuse until there’s no time left, no fight left, no song, no story. (p. 108).