Earlier this week I took a day trip to New York for a callback in a new musical that is to premiere this summer. As with all journeys into the unknown, the trip was full of lessons from the Lord.....
While I was riding into the city, I was thinking about what a crazy week it had been already. This upcoming callback would make my fifth audition in the last eight days. Now, for a regular working actor, this is normal business, but for a college student, this can only be described as February. February, the month when every college actor travels to country trying to find a place to work for the summer.
If there is one thing the Lord has taught me over the course of these auditions though, both as an actor, and as an artist in general, is that we cannot hold onto anything too tightly. No matter what the role, or job, or client, or whatever, we must surrender our will and desires to the fact that it’s out of our control, to the fact that the Lord has a masterful plan that he will enact.
This does not mean that we don’t still want to job very badly and are very passionate about pursuing. Passion is beautiful, passion is from the Lord, but the passion must be in the pursuit. For the artist, it is the pursuit of art itself that keeps us going, rather then the pursuit of success. Success will sidetrack us and run us down. When we hold onto success as a desired outcome and we are disappointed, we will be crushed, our spirit utterly destroyed, and we will be left with no strength to go on.
But if we can loose our grip, pursue art first, and trust that our loving God has a plan for our good. We will find not only the stamina to persevere through disappointment, but the joy of the pursuit continued.
-jon
If there is one thing the Lord has taught me over the course of these auditions though, both as an actor, and as an artist in general, is that we cannot hold onto anything too tightly. No matter what the role, or job, or client, or whatever, we must surrender our will and desires to the fact that it’s out of our control, to the fact that the Lord has a masterful plan that he will enact.
This does not mean that we don’t still want to job very badly and are very passionate about pursuing. Passion is beautiful, passion is from the Lord, but the passion must be in the pursuit. For the artist, it is the pursuit of art itself that keeps us going, rather then the pursuit of success. Success will sidetrack us and run us down. When we hold onto success as a desired outcome and we are disappointed, we will be crushed, our spirit utterly destroyed, and we will be left with no strength to go on.
But if we can loose our grip, pursue art first, and trust that our loving God has a plan for our good. We will find not only the stamina to persevere through disappointment, but the joy of the pursuit continued.
-jon
