“Know thyself.” The ancient Greek maxim holds some truth to it. Though there is such a thing as morbid introspection, knowing ourselves can be crucial for the believer in Christ. We mainly find out about ourselves through reading Scripture, which acquaints us with our sinful nature and helps us get to know the character of God, but we can also get to know ourselves by taking time to process our thoughts and feelings. There is such a thing as healthy self-reflection and assessment in light of the grace found in Christ. If self-reflection and assessment leads to increased knowledge of God, and if it leads to a deeper love for and a closer relationship with Christ, then it’s healthy.
Leave Room for Silence and Reflection
Our culture, in general, is busy and fast-paced. We tend to overschedule and pack in as much as we can in our lives for various reasons—success, money, fame, anxiety, etc. We don’t leave enough room for silence, for the stillness and quiet to invade us and show us ourselves and the Word of God applied to our lives. God can still work in our lives during busyness, but we must fight against intentionally crowding him out due to idols of the heart. One way we can stop the madness and invite the stillness is through the arts: stopping to do something with our hands; laboring to make something beautiful—whether a loaf of bread, a painting, or a knit hat; taking a walk with a camera in hand; or carving out time to sit down and write, whether that be formal writing on a laptop or informal writing in a personal journal.
God created us to process. And we do a disservice to ourselves when we zoom past that and ignore or bury our feelings instead of acknowledging them and working through them. Our emotions are a gift from God and designed by Him as a signpost for us. We don’t need to be scared of emotions or automatically assume they are all sinful. But we do need to make sure that the Word of Truth is always our foundation and use it to test our thoughts and feelings. The end goal of acknowledging and processing our thoughts and feelings is always to love God and neighbor more. It’s not ultimately about our self-fulfillment or self-actualization, and it’s not at all about self-glorification. We process in order to understand and help ourselves, so we can then love others better. The end result must always be doing the right thing in accordance with Scripture; the end fruit is always virtue. And spiritual rest is another added bonus.
Follow the Psalmists’ Example
The arts can be one vehicle of providing rest through helping us process life, emotions, human experience, and even the truths of Scripture. We see a prime example of this from King David.
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Liz Wann 