When I started college I was an Art History major. Although I loved it, my dad and my track coach talked me into switching to something more practical.
But for two semesters, I was in heaven.
In one lecture, a professor showed us images of beautiful old cathedrals, built by genius masters and architects. She told us that many of the cathedrals were made with inconsistencies, “mistakes” were made on purpose. The designers did this as an act of humility, so as not to compete with a perfect God, and to highlight His holiness.
The glory of God is His holy perfection. These buildings built for Him embraced mankind’s imperfect humanness in their design.
It’s been almost twenty years since I heard this, and I still think abut it almost weekly.
It is a comfort to think of my own failures and inconsistencies as pointing to the only One who is imperfect. Humility is easily embraced when I remember that when I fall short of God’s glory, it only proves the awesomeness of His greatness.
The fire of forgiveness and mercy in my heart are stoked by this message of grace,too. When the carelessness and selfishness of others lash at my heart, I can run to the God who sees me, who loves me, and remember that He sees and loves my enemy, too. Who can live and not wound those around them? Surely not a single one of us who are born in the line of Adam.
I’m sure my art history professor had little knowledge that her lecture would plant itself in my heart that day back in 1995. She was a very old woman, wise with her many years, crowned with grey hair and a voice that wavered after speaking millions of words in her many years. I don’t remember her name, the name of the building, the number of the lecture hall, or the name of the course.
But I often remember the message of those earthly designers when I open my Bible and read words that carry me back to that fold-down theater seat, just to the left of the lectern, with a giant cathedral on the screen, two windows on the left wing, three windows on the right.
But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. -Corinthians 12:9-10
I read and I smile at the grace in my forgetfulness, my quick temper, the days I burn dinner moments before company arrives, the times I long for bedtime and an end to the day’s labor.
I offer myself as a cathedral to those around me. I am saved and filled by a holy God, but my humanness is on display as well.
This is grace, this is life: to own who I am with humility and pray He makes me more and more like Him each day.
The lessons learned in Art History may be more practical than it seemed twenty years ago, and worthy of study, indeed.
