Adorning the Dark: Thoughts on Community, Calling, and the Mystery of Making

by Andrew Peterson

That calling, as I understand it, is to use whatever gifts I’ve been given to tell the truth as beautifully as I can.

I realize this is a weakness. But it’s a weakness God has redeemed again and again, one that has gotten me into a lot of trouble, the getting out of which has always led to something healing or edifying.

Jesus said, “In my Father’s house are many rooms” (John 14:2). Could it be that those rooms are inner chambers in the heart of God, each of which has an individual’s name on it? If this is true, and I’d like to believe it is, then all I have to do is tell about my Lord and my God. Because I know him intimately, uniquely, it may be a revelation, in a sense, of the secret things of the Father. This is part of my calling—to make known the heart of God.

And because he holds a special place in his heart for me and me alone (just as he holds a special place for you), my story stands a chance to be edifying to my sisters and brothers, just as your story, your insight, your revelation of God’s heart, is something the rest of us need.

The best thing you can do is to keep your nose to the grindstone, to remember that it takes a lot of work to hone your gift into something useful, and that you have to learn to enjoy the work—especially the parts you don’t enjoy.

If you can put aside your worry long enough to feel that wind and to walk with it at your back, it will lead you to a good land. It will remind you that righteousness means more than pious obedience; it means letting a strong, humble mercy mark your path, even when—especially when—you don’t know where it’s taking you.

After that, the Lord can redeem your impulse for self-preservation by easing you toward love, which is never about self. But if you’re scared, there’s no rush. First you have to do something. You have to climb out from under the bushel and share your light with those around you. You have to believe that you’re precious to the King of Creation, and not just a waste of space.

We holy fools all bear God’s image. We’re walking temples of the Spirit, the bashful bride of Christ, living stones in what is going to be a grand house, as holy and precious as anything else in the universe, if not more so. God is making us into a Kingdom, a lovely, peaceful one, lit by his love for us flowing toward one another. That’s the best gift you have to give.

The Christian’s calling, in part, is to proclaim God’s dominion in every corner of the world—in every corner of our hearts, too. It isn’t that we’re fighting a battle in which we must win ground from the forces of evil; the ground is already won. Satan is just an outlaw. And we have the pleasure of declaring God’s Kingdom with love, service, and peace in our homes and communities.

We need not look anywhere but to the eyes of our Savior for our true identity, an identity which is profoundly complex, unfathomable, deep as the sea, and yet can be boiled down to one little word: beloved. That’s it. And that’s why it’s so silly (and perilous) to use your gifting to clothe yourself with meaning. Those clothes will never quite fit.

about Jesus and only about Jesus was like performing yearly maintenance on my soul. Every December I would think, “Oh, right. This is the point of it all. Now I remember.” It was like bringing flowers to my first love on our anniversary. Actually, no. It was like my first love bringing flowers to me.

All you really have is your willingness to fail, coupled with the mountain of evidence that the Maker has never left nor forsaken you.

We’re not invited into this because God needs us, but because he wants us.

Once again, Jesus was right all along. We are most ourselves when we’re thinking least about ourselves. It reminds me of Paul’s rant in Romans 7, when he talks about how he wants to do one thing but then does another, and you can just hear his frustration with himself. That passage has brought me such comfort merely through commiseration. But it’s really a passage about self-consciousness. At the end he asks, “Who will save me from this body of death?” (v. 24). And his answer is almost a sigh of relief: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (v. 25). Self, self, self—then Christ, Christ, Christ. Paul, who for a paragraph seems almost pathetic in his self-frustration, turns his eyes to Christ and then reminds himself and the rest of us that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Life itself—the one I was actually living—for once outshone the life I had yearned for. The Maker of this beautiful, broken world ambushed me. He had lain in wait for the perfect moment to spring: the perfect song at the perfect hour of the day, the contrition of my hungry heart, the intricate staging of the beauty that had led me to that dewy lawn, and his holy, brooding spirit draped over the valley like a mist. “Drink,” he told me, “and thirst no more.” I’m not saying this was my actual conversion, but it was a salient moment that perhaps marked the end of a season of struggle. When the shadows cast by my disappointment and self-hatred were banished by the light of the forgiveness, the acceptance, and the infinite affection of Christ, I could see the world around me for the miracle it was. I could see myself as a miracle. Scripture tells us that when God looks at a Christian he sees Christ’s righteousness—in a similar way, the Christian is now free to see Christ in everything. Even himself. I was gloriously alive, and I was at home in the palm of God’s hand.

A poet is a man who is glad of something, and tries to make other people glad of it, too.”5 George MacDonald wrote that a hundred years ago. That’s one way of looking at songwriting. But a songwriter is also a person who is sad about something and wants other people to be sad about it too, or is confused by something and wants others to feel that confusion. Songwriting is about resonance.

The thing the Resistance doesn’t want you to know is that revision is the fun part.

Truth without beauty can be a weapon; beauty without truth can be spineless.

There’s a purist approach to art in which the artist is expected to create simply for the sake of creating, making beauty for its own sake; the artist operates with abandon and is loathe to interfere or try and control the wild impulse of art. It does have a certain romance. But we’re not merely artistic, creative creatures—we’re rational, articulate creatures, too, so why not bring both to bear?

because I want them to believe that love outlives all the pain that ever was.

You can’t blame your equipment. You can’t blame your lack of time. You can’t blame your upbringing. Either you’re willing to steward the gift God gave you by stepping into the ring and fighting for it, or you spend your life in training, cashing in excuse after excuse until there’s no time left, no fight left, no song, no story.

Remember. Remember, Hebrew children, who you once were in Egypt. Remember the altars set up along the way to remind yourselves that you made the journey and God rescued you from sword and famine, from chariots and pestilence, that once you were there, but now you are here. It happened. Our memories are fallible, residing in that most complex and mysterious organ in the human body (and therefore the known universe), capable of being suppressed, manipulated, altered, but also profoundly powerful and able to transport a person to a place fifty years ago all because of a whiff of your grandfather’s cologne or an old book or the salty air. As often as you do this, do it in remembrance of me. Remember with every sip of wine that we shared this meal, you and I. Remember.

It ought to be a matter of course in our culture that members of every household show love to each other through poems, letters, or pictures, and do so fearlessly, without intimidation, without a thought about marketability.

That’s community. They look you in the eye and remind you who you are in Christ. They reiterate your calling when you forget what it is. They step into the garden and help you weed it, help you to grow something beautiful.

I want you, dear reader, to remember that one holy way of mending the world is to sing, to write, to paint, to weave new worlds. Because the seed of your feeble-yet-faithful work fell to the ground, died, and rose again, what Christ has done through you will call forth praise from lonesome travelers long after your name is forgotten. They will know someone lived and loved here. Whoever they were, they will think, they belonged to God. It’s clear that they believed the stories of Jesus were true, and it gave them a hope that made their lives beautiful in ways that will unfold for ages among the linnea that shimmers in the moonlit woods.