“Looks without seeing…”
“the average human looks without seeing, listens without hearing,
touches without feeling, eats without tasting, moves without physical awareness,
inhales without awareness of odor or fragrance, and talks without thinking.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
As a church creative, I am often moving through projects at a rapid fire pace. In order to stay ahead of the curve I am usually working on what is coming next while the people of my church are experiencing what I did last. Today I am rereading Primal by Mark Batterson (getting ready for our series based on the book that starts this weekend) and Mark quotes da Vinci. The thought occurred to me…
“How often do I do this when it comes to experiencing God for myself?”
This morning I realized that I continually fall into the “Martha” trap. Spending so much time preparing for people to come to our church and experience God that I myself fail to SEE God in the experience, HEAR what He is saying, FEEL His presence, TASTE His goodness, be AWARE of His movement, SMELL His fragrance, and THINK about what He has done.
Just the other day I was talking about when designing a worship experience, we want to stimulate as many senses as we can. We want our stage, lights, graphics, video, lobby all to look good to stimulate the eyes. We want the music, the speaker’s tone & the mix to all sound good to the ears. We want the lobby, the bathrooms, the sanctuary and the kids areas to all smell good to the olfactory. We want the coffee and the food in the cafe to taste good. And, as a church creative, I spend much of my time working to make sure that when a person walks into our church their senses are stimulated in the hope that this will somehow move them toward God.
As if good smelling bathrooms are the key to a person’s salvation.
This is an easy trap to fall into.. After all, the worship experience is important, but if the experience design becomes more important then who it is ultimately designed for… well #epicfail.
This morning is a gut check for me. I realize again, (I have had this realization before, but needed to be reminded) that I must intentionally create out of SEEING the Creator, HEARING His Word, FEELING His Presence, TASTING His Goodness, BEING AWARE of His Moves, SMELLING His Fragrance and THINKING about what HE has done and is doing.
Practically this means I have to make the time to experience our worship experiences and ignore the voices calling to me from the production suite for at least one service a week. I think, in this season, with this one discipline I can be in the position to LOOK and SEE.
I would like to hear if this is a place you find yourself often and what practical disciplines you put in place to prevent it or if in it, get out of it? Leave me some comments..
