I sat in a lecture the other day in my acting for the camera class that got me thinking. In speaking about rehearsing for the camera, my professor said this, “Rehearsing for the camera is more like farming, less like hunting.”
What he meant was that for great camera acting to exist, you cannot simply hunt for emotion, you have to plant seeds of images and memories during rehearsal, in hopes that you will reap a harvest of something real while you’re shooting.
As soon as the term planting seeds was brought into the conversation, my ears immediately perked up. I got to thinking far beyond the camera and began to ponder about how we as Christians live our lives.
America is the world capitol of the quick fix. Numerous microwaves in every household, faster and faster internet, remotes that control literally everything in our houses, and if any of these things break, of course we’ll just buy a new one. We’d like to think that we’ve advanced past our hunter gatherer ancestors, but the truth of the matter is, we still live our lives with a hunting mentality, and we expect our lives with Christ to be the same way.
Paul speaks about the idea of spiritual milk and meat a few times throughout the New Testament. These are the good gifts of God, the fruit of the Spirit that will empower and enable us to live a more God-centered life. Our problem most often is not that we don’t desire to be spiritually fed, the problem is that we want to be fed and satisfied right now. We want to hunt down spiritual growth, stab it with a spear, make it our own, and get back to watching television.
We are all well aware of spiritual hunting habits. This is when you read your K-Love verse of the day online and call it your quiet time. This is when your “year long devotional book” is entering into it’s fourth year of new use. This is when we don’t go to church so you make up for it by listening to the sermon podcast while you get ready for work in the morning. Don’t get me wrong, daily verse reminders, devotional books, and podcasts are all wonderful resources, but they cannot stand alone as our only means of spiritual growth.
The reason Jesus uses so many farmer metaphors in the gospel’s is because cultivating a relationship with God, just like any other relationship, is a process. A relationship requires time spent together, and seeds of trust, love, and commitment that are planted early and allowed to grow over months and years.
We must cease this spiritual hunting. It does not satisfy our needs, nor does it help to form a lasting relationship with our Creator. Let us be farmers together, who not only plant seeds in others, but also plant seeds of growth within ourselves in order to further our commitment to God, and desire to know Him better.
-jon
What he meant was that for great camera acting to exist, you cannot simply hunt for emotion, you have to plant seeds of images and memories during rehearsal, in hopes that you will reap a harvest of something real while you’re shooting.
As soon as the term planting seeds was brought into the conversation, my ears immediately perked up. I got to thinking far beyond the camera and began to ponder about how we as Christians live our lives.
America is the world capitol of the quick fix. Numerous microwaves in every household, faster and faster internet, remotes that control literally everything in our houses, and if any of these things break, of course we’ll just buy a new one. We’d like to think that we’ve advanced past our hunter gatherer ancestors, but the truth of the matter is, we still live our lives with a hunting mentality, and we expect our lives with Christ to be the same way.
Paul speaks about the idea of spiritual milk and meat a few times throughout the New Testament. These are the good gifts of God, the fruit of the Spirit that will empower and enable us to live a more God-centered life. Our problem most often is not that we don’t desire to be spiritually fed, the problem is that we want to be fed and satisfied right now. We want to hunt down spiritual growth, stab it with a spear, make it our own, and get back to watching television.
We are all well aware of spiritual hunting habits. This is when you read your K-Love verse of the day online and call it your quiet time. This is when your “year long devotional book” is entering into it’s fourth year of new use. This is when we don’t go to church so you make up for it by listening to the sermon podcast while you get ready for work in the morning. Don’t get me wrong, daily verse reminders, devotional books, and podcasts are all wonderful resources, but they cannot stand alone as our only means of spiritual growth.
The reason Jesus uses so many farmer metaphors in the gospel’s is because cultivating a relationship with God, just like any other relationship, is a process. A relationship requires time spent together, and seeds of trust, love, and commitment that are planted early and allowed to grow over months and years.
We must cease this spiritual hunting. It does not satisfy our needs, nor does it help to form a lasting relationship with our Creator. Let us be farmers together, who not only plant seeds in others, but also plant seeds of growth within ourselves in order to further our commitment to God, and desire to know Him better.
-jon
