Today someone, armed just with a pencil and paper could make something that will last forever.
It might be a pencil sketch, or a melody, or a novel, or a theorem.
As long as there are people, that picture or song or story or insight will live on. Even if humans are out-evolved by (let us say) intelligent machines, they may be wise enough still to treasure these divine relics.
And our art may add to the furniture in an eternal age to come. The Bible’s Book of Revelation says ‘The glory and honour of the nations’ will be carried into City of God (Rev 21:26).
Once there was a time when Picasso had not sketched a dove, when Handel had not written the Hallelujah chorus, when no-one knew the magical relation between e, i, pi, 1 and zero, when no-one had ever written a gospel or a sonnet.
Today or tomorrow some art will be created that will loved for a thousand or ten thousand years.
Two thoughts
Two obvious thoughts flow:
- How can anyone believe we are not made in the image of God? That we are not his sketches, melodies, novels, theorems? That he didn’t create us to create this stuff to celebrate his glory of which he contained too much to keep to himself?
- Buy a pencil-sharpener.