Graduation Day

Creating Redemptive Art

Last night, I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t fall back asleep. After scrolling social media for a few minutes, I saw that my cousin had posted her wedding anniversary photos. Then I remembered I couldn’t attend her wedding nine years ago because I was walking down another aisle. May 6, 2017, was the day I received my Master’s in Journalism from Regent University.

So I opened TimeHop, a time-capsule app on my phone that helps me relive moments from the same day in years past. The joy and excitement on my face as I walked across the stage to receive my degree were palpable. I was stepping into a new season at work, leading a global online platform for storytelling and social media advocacy. I was also preparing to launch a new faith-based magazine for women, Wit + Grace Magazine.

The day before graduation, the school held a commissioning service for the School of Communications, where a speaker urged us to be not only Christian artists but also truth-bearers and truth-tellers. Creating redemptive art is holy work, whether it’s done in places of worship or in the marketplace. Redemptive art is a form of creative expression that acknowledges the world’s brokenness, pain, or darkness yet offers hope, healing, and transformation. It bears witness to truth, reconciliation, and new life.

At the time, the longing to create this type of art was tangible, but I was also “conscious of my coins,” as the kids say. I led two separate lives; during the day, I told stories about breakthrough medicines and the people who develop them. At night and on weekends, I burned the midnight oil, interviewing faith-based entrepreneurs and creatives experiencing different seasons of life change. One role paid very well, while the other only paid in “Kingdom dividends,” as the old saints would say.

By the time the pandemic hit in 2020, I was burned out and overwhelmed. Naturally, I began to lean more heavily on the work that funded my vacations and lifestyle rather than on the redemptive work that had sparked so much joy and excitement in me just three years earlier. Fast-forward to 2022, and I finally took an official pause from the magazine and stopped creating art altogether.

But beneath the surface, as the months and years passed, a persistent question remained in my spirit: “Is there more for me than this, and what does it take to step into everything I’m called to do?”

“But if I say, ‘I will not mention his word or speak anymore in his name,’ his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot.”

When the prophet Jeremiah spoke these words, he had already been arrested, tortured, and persecuted. Earlier in his life, God had commissioned him to be a prophet to the nations. In Jeremiah 1:5, we hear these now-infamous words, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you [and approved of you as My chosen instrument], And before you were born, I consecrated you [to Myself as My own]; I have appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”

But my guy Jerry was insecure. He felt inadequate to speak on behalf of the Lord and told Him so. To which God said, “Behold (hear Me), I have put My words in your mouth. See, I have appointed you this day over the nations and over the kingdoms, to uproot and break down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.”

Years later, when we meet him in Chapter 20, he has suffered so much loneliness and heartbreak over the spiritual condition of the Israelites that he is known as the “weeping prophet.” He wrote the Book of Lamentations, which serves as a blueprint for lamenting or grieving with God. Yet, he reminds us that, despite the afflictions, every morning is a new day filled with hope and God’s mercies (Lamentations 3:19-27). He doesn’t waver or wander but remains steadfast and sure of his calling to be a truth-teller to the nations.

Within each of us, there is a fire or a deep desire to step into a calling uniquely commissioned by God. Like Jeremiah, we may feel inadequate, insecure, or under-resourced. Or we may simply not want to suffer for our art or our calling, whether financially or emotionally. But I’m here to tell you that the fire is all-consuming. It needs an outlet. There is a critical choice to make in these moments – to create art or work that is redemptive or destructive. There is no middle ground.

This is my graduation day, and even though much has changed over the past nine years, I still choose the redemptive work of truth-telling.

Pssst: I’m relaunching Wit + Grace Magazine and would love your support. Visit our website and click the subscribe button to join our journey in redemptive storytelling.