Scribbling in the Sand

I read this inspiring story today in a new book I've begun and thought I'd wet your appetite. The book is Scribbling in the Sand, Christ and Creativity by Michael Card. I love his music and I didn't know he is quite the writer as well!

He tells the story of traveling to China to perform a concert, but at the last minute his concert was unexpectedly canceled. He was able to pull together an informal gathering of students, and gives this account from his time with them.

"I shared a couple of songs but soon sensed that the students were more eager to share their experiences with me. A young, intelligent woman shared her testimony, and spoke of the spiritual struggle growing up in a place where official doctrine dictated against any belief in God. She told us, however, that since she was a little girl she had found her heart resonated with the beauty in nature. She described a series of epiphanies. First there was a sunset that caused a deep stirring in her soul that she could not put into words. Then there was a time when the simmple beauty of the flowers in her mother's garden spoke to her of a simplicity for which her heart yearned. Simply by observing the beauty in nature she had become convicted of the existence of not simply a benign god but a loving, caring Father. "Imagine the joy I experineced when I learned that he had a name, and that it was Jesus", she shared. All at once almost everyone started chiming in with nearly identical stories..."

Another quote I loved:
"Beauty...one color in the spectrum of the light that is Christ."

"For God, who said, "Light shall shine out of darkness," is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ." (Paul said that one!)