Take It Home: the Negative Space / Vision Series 2022
As we explore our mission and vision in our 2022 Visions Series, we are taking each week to focus in on each phrase in our mission… becoming disciples who fix our eyes on Jesus, are formed in community, and live out our calling.
We’re guessing you looked at the cactus pretty quickly yeah?
The Negative Space
This past Sunday we focused on (pun intended) fixing our eyes on Jesus. How we can create and use negative space in our lives to truly fix our eyes on the author and perfector of our faith.
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, 2 fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. 3 Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.” Hebrews 12:1-3 NIV
“Fix your eyes on Jesus” is a simple command but it seems to be not as easy to do. Why? One reason is that we are, through and through, a distracted and fragmented society in our everyday lives. Clinicians have started to call this persistent and constant distraction, “Consistent Partial Attention”. We are living such fragmented lives that we are coining terms to understand it.
And unfortunately, this bleeds into our faith. How we live it and enjoy it is paying the price for our attention deficit. We are having trouble fixing or attaching or turning our eyes to Jesus (you pick the translation). Not because he is non-existent but because we have not created rhythms or patterns where he can exist fully and in all his glory in our lives.
As Richard Foster writes, “In contemporary society our Adversary [a biblical title for the devil] majors in three things: noise, hurry, and crowds. If he can keep us engaged in ‘muchness’ and ‘manyness,’ he will rest satisfied.”
On Sunday, we used the idea of Negative Space to illustrate what it might look like to focus our eyes on Jesus. Negative space is simply the space around and between the subject of an image.
A quick explanation it’s value and why artists might use it goes something like this…
“There’s never a positive without a negative, and the same can be said in art. Positive space and negative space work together to achieve balance in a composition. Without them, a work might overwhelm the eye or not activate the layout at all (how dull!). To ensure that a drawing or painting is in equilibrium, you must always remember to plan the areas of negative space as much as you do the active space.”
To see that which is positive or active we must create the negative or inactive. The empty space allows us to emphasize the object. Like an art gallery with white walls and very little else, we see, we really, really see, the artwork. After all, it is the reason we came.
And here is the purpose, Jesus is the object of all affection. He is the creator and source. He is the reason we are here. And we must create negative space where we can see, consider, behold all the He is for all that He is.
After all, a fragmented focus leads to fragmented faith. Without the space to focus on Jesus our faith is without that which authors it. And Jesus reminds us, what we behold we will become. It will be what makes us healthy or not. Full of light or not.
“Your eye is the lamp of the body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is also full of light. But when it is bad, your body is also full of darkness.” Matthew 6:22
To follow Jesus we must be able to see Jesus.
In this vein, here are a few questions to ask and actions you might take to create the negative space to see Jesus. To truly fix your eyes upon him and behold him.
Return to Sunday’s message on YouTube or podcast and review what stuck out to you. Write it down. Meditate on it. Ask the Holy Spirit to lead you in applying it to your life.
Make it a goal over the next week or two to create a rhythm of ‘negative space’ in your schedule. Where there are no deadlines, objectives, or tasks. In many ways, this is an active resistance to the pressures of life. It looks into the face of ‘constant partial attention’ and rejects it as your norm.
Read a Psalm or the verse of the day or your favorite verse.
Don’t say a word. Be still. Ask the Holy Spirit to inhabit this moment.
Think upon all that is good about God.
Download these Lectio 365 or YouVersion Bible App (or others like it) and use them at some point in your day. When you wake up or just before you go to sleep. Maybe at lunch break or on your drive home.
We suggest reading the Gospels (not all at the same time) always keeping Jesus front and center in your regular reading.
And finish by asking yourself these questions…
What happens if I begin to fix my eyes on Jesus on a more consistent basis than I currently do?
What are the things or feelings or objects that consistently show up on the art gallery wall next to Jesus that distract or turn my eyes from him? Don’t feel bad or guilty. Give them to God.