Creatio Ex Nihilo

The Only True Protest is Beauty

Grace — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 13:46:02 GMT

Wars have been waged, battles have been fought, billions have been spent - all in the pursuit of something that could be considered fleeting, temporal, or even vain. Society has always been willing to sacrifice extraordinary things for beauty: fortunes for paintings, generations for cathedrals, lives for cities.

However, what lies under all of this frenzy is the confronting truth of the idea that Beauty really is the only true protest.

But what does beauty ask of us? What does it require? And why, in a world increasingly preoccupied with efficiency, utility, productivity, and sheer survival, should we still care about pursuing something as seemingly elusive and trivial as beauty?

As the Fondazione Dries Van Noten opened this year in Venice, its inaugural exhibition wrestled with these questions.

Housed within a magnificent Venetian palazzo, the exhibition brought together themes of beauty, sacrifice, creativity, violence, desire, and turmoil. It presented Beauty as “a charged encounter, capable of unsettling the familiar and making space for the unexpected.”

I could not agree more.

On the eve of His crucifixion, before changing the entire course of history, Jesus highlighted the beauty of sacrifice itself. Judas (and probably Peter if we’re honest,) are indignant at the lavish oil Mary has poured over His feet. It wasn’t just that the oil was costly, but the jars that housed fragrant oil were works of art in themselves.

The jar is shattered, the oil is spilled, and Jesus’ response is, “She has done a beautiful thing to me.”

Jesus doesn’t dismiss the act as a sentimental extravagance. He does not rebuke her for wasting something valuable.

He recognizes that there are some things whose value cannot be measured by utility alone.

The offering is beautiful precisely because it is extravagant. It was unnecessary perhaps, but it came with a cost and with love and devotion.

Perhaps beauty has always operated this way.

To make something beautiful in the midst of suffering is to declare that pain does not have the final word. To preserve a painting, restore a building, arrange flowers, write a poem, compose a piece of music, construct a cathedral, or extend kindess can seem almost absurd when set against the scale of human suffering. But perhaps that absurdity is precisely the point.

Beauty is a longing for something beyond, something better. It truly is a protest against the horrors and pain of the world, beauty is constantly reaching toward resolution.

One artist featured through the Fondazione, Ayham Hassan, reflected: “We, as Palestinians, don’t get the luxury of turning away. But we also can’t only mourn. You don’t survive if you stay mourning. That’s why beauty matters.”

Choosing beauty does not mean averting our gaze from suffering. Conversely, the deepest beauty may be born precisely from our refusal to look away.

Beauty lifts our eyes.

In the midst of mourning, grief, or loss, beauty turns our heads to see hope, life, and a better path. It reminds us that there are ways of seeing the world beyond cynicism, consumption, violence, and despair. It asks us to imagine that things could be otherwise.

And then, perhaps, to participate in making them otherwise.

It is easy to skip through the earlier books of the Bible. Laws, rules, regulations, we quickly think. But beyond those chapters we skim, there are plans for a temple that were as intentional as they were beautiful. As the Lord instructed Moses in the construction of the Tabernacle, He calls Bezalel and fills him with “the Spirit of God, with wisdom, with understanding, with knowledge, and with all kinds of craftsmanship” so that he might create beautiful things for the worship and glory of God. From the outset, Beauty was not an afterthought to worship.

The Psalmist David writes:

“One thing I have asked of the Lord, and this I will seek: to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord all the days of my life.”

Beauty is not something fleeting or fanciful, it is a direction and a focused, sustained vision.

Venice itself is a living canvas of the cost and vision of beauty. For centuries, it has stood as a crossroads and bridge between the pursuit of beauty and the Divine. A city built against the logic of nature, constructed upon water, preserved across centuries through ingenuity, wealth, labor, trade, devotion, and extraordinary artistic vision. Its beauty and its reputation are neither accidental nor cheap.

Its palazzos, churches, bridges, paintings, mosaics, and sculptures testify to a civilization that believed beauty was worth building toward. Even now, as the city contends with the pressures of time, tourism, rising waters, and decay, there remains something almost defiant about its continued existence.

Like Venice, Beauty itself is a protest. It is a confident and consistent declaration that better is ahead. The war is not lost, and the darkness will not overcome. Perhaps this is why David prayed to “gaze upon the beauty of the Lord”; what we choose to behold will eventually shape what we love.

In a world screaming at us to consume, optimize, and move on, perhaps choosing to behold, to create, and to pursue beauty is itself an act of resistance. Beauty is a protest because, although it comes with a cost, it offers much, much more than it takes. It offers us the hope of the Eternal, the beauty of the Divine.

Thanks for reading Creatio Ex Nihilo! This post is public so feel free to share it.

The Garden of Resurrection Life

Grace — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 02:12:16 GMT

In the early morning of the first dawn and dew of that sacred Resurrection Sunday, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb. She came not with hope, but with spices to tend and honor the dead, to do the last and loving thing a grieving heart can do.

But what she discovered offers a glimpse of the resounding impact Resurrection Sunday invites us into even now.

Rembrandt van Rijn’s Christ and St. Mary Magdalene at the Tomb paints Resurrection Sunday in a deliberately different light than the familiar motif of Noli Me Tangere, Jesus’ instructions to Mary after she recognized him. Here instead, we’re caught in between the greiving and the realization of Mary Magdalene. The canvas itself reflects the movement of this ground breaking moment. The warm, amber glow emanating from the risen Christ and the temple on His left contrasted against the deep shadow of the tomb’s entrance, from which Mary has just turned with angels watching.

Mary is caught mid-gesture, somewhere between sorrow and recognition. Christ stands tall, robed in white and pale gold. Yet not as a risen king, but as a humble gardener, adorned with a wide-brimmed gardener’s hat, shovel, and tools.

This painting is so characteristic of Rembrandt. He returned time and time again to sacred scenes, not to illustrate theology from a distance, as was in vogue, but to bring it to life in an engaging way. Like Caravaggio, he often would place himself inside the stories of Scripture as a participant within the miracles. Here, although he hasn’t painted his face in the scene, he has left us with a bit of his own heart and understanding of faith.

Here, instead of focusing on the moment after, our eyes are fixed upon finding life blooming abundantly through the disguise of Jesus as a gardener.

But is it really a disguise? Or is this Jesus reminding us of something we have always been meant to know, that He is, in fact, truly a gardener?

He tends. He shapes. He cultivates. He brings to full bloom the fruits of His love and of the Spirit. He nourishes us back to the soil of our foundations.

Christ as the gardener reminds us that redemption is not abstract, it’s real and earthy. It’s patient. It involves tending, pruning, and waiting. The resurrection didn’t happen in a throne room, or the temple court depicted far off in Rembrandt’s work. It happened in a garden. Amidst the roots and the morning dew and the smell of turned earth. Much like our first home, Eden.

The teachings of Jesus are saturated with the metaphors of planting and harvest, drawing us continually back to reminders of the Garden of Eden. “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12.24). “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?” (Matthew 6.28-30).

From the first pages of Scripture to the very last, the garden has always been a setting for miracles. Eden, where God walked in the cool of the day. Gethsemane, where Christ sweat great drops of blood and surrendered his will. The Garden of Resurecction life, an unnamed garden outside Jerusalem. The New Garden that is promised in Revelation 22.

Paul writes in Romans that “the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God” (Romans 8.19). The earth itself groans for what Christ has now inaugurated. The garden is not incidental to the resurrection story, it’s essential. The site of the grief and first chasm between God and mankind becomes the site of restoration between the Creator with his Creation.

Rembrandt didn’t paint a victorious Christ glowing in beam of light, standing triumphantly. He painted a Christ who, although he does stand triumphantly in the place of burial, in the morning quiet and close enough to touch, is still the humble King his disciples left everything to follow.

This is the staggering joy of Easter: He is not there, buried in the tomb. He is here, in the garden. In a place redeemed and lush.

Christ the gardener is still at work, even today…. tending, shaping, preparing ground for a harvest. Christ was risen, on that blessed Resurrection Sunday, but He is also risen here and now, in the garden of our hearts and our lives. Where the price of Eden once stood, there is now the gift of salvation, allowing the ground to burst to life through His sacrifice.

Thanks for reading Creatio Ex Nihilo! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Ash Wednesday: From the Seeds of the Earth

Grace — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 03:45:14 GMT

In the stillness of that eternal Garden, a tree was planted, and dust was given life. I think humanity has been seeking that simplicity ever since.

Ash Wednesday is a call to our original home, a call to obedience and to remember what our home was, and the home we are promised to return to.

No one quite knows what the Tree of Life was, but I am partial …

The Progress of Love: Jean-Honoré Fragonard

Grace — Sat, 14 Feb 2026 22:51:51 GMT

Perhaps one of the most romantic artists of all time, the Frenchman Jean-Honoré Fragonard was tasked with creating a cycle of monumental panels commissioned by Madame du Barry for her pleasure pavilion at Louveciennes. The paintings that he created were quintessentially Rococo: pastel gardens, silk dresses, hidden glances, theatrical gestures, lush foli…

From, "Your Valentine": The Story of St. Valentine

Grace — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 17:12:40 GMT

It’s in my mom waking me up with a coffee even before she’s had her own…

It’s in the guy who ordered a bouquet last year of 384 roses for each day he and his girlfriend had spent together…

It’s also in the guy who showed up last minute to find one single flower to take to his roommate…

It’s in your friends saying, “How can I help you? This reminded me of y…

Lords Leaping, Pipers Piping, Drummers Drumming, AND Believers Believing

Grace — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 23:26:46 GMT

As the Twelve Days of Christmas draw to a close with the Feast of Epiphany, so too, the catchy carol doesn’t wind down, but builds to its final crescendo and inviation for us all.

The final three gifts, ten lords leaping, eleven pipers piping, and twelve drummers drumming, gather together the moral law, the call to discipleship, and the confession of fa…

On the Ninth Day of Christmas: The Serious Business of Heaven

Grace — Sun, 04 Jan 2026 02:33:55 GMT

January might feel like a bleak month, but by the second or third week - if you’re in London or the East Coast - keep your eyes peeled as you walk. You’ll start to see snowdrops cropping up, and just like that, spring is on the way.

On the Ninth Day of Christmas, the carol gives us nine ladies dancing, a beautiful image of the joy and fruit of Holy Spir…

On the Eighth Day of Christmas: True Rest

Grace — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 05:24:30 GMT

On the beginning of a bright new year, and still in the midst of the ongoing Christmas Carol, we find eight maids milking, an image that is at once humble, domestic, and strangely luminous. These eight women represent the Beatitudes proclaimed by Christ in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5.3–10) and offer us an example for the year ahead.

They are not …

On the Seventh Day of Christmas: Lasting Fruit

Grace — Thu, 01 Jan 2026 05:05:18 GMT

On the seventh day of Christmas, we’re invited into an image of grace, strength, and ordered beauty gliding effortlessly across the water, timelessly represented by swans.

These seven swans have long been understood to represent the seven Fruits of the Spirit, drawn from Paul’s letter to the Galatians:

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, pat…

On the Sixth Day of Christmas: Creation Unfolding

Grace — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 05:30:11 GMT

On the sixth day of Christmas, the carol turns back once again to animals and gives us six geese a-laying, an image that feels pastoral, almost humble, yet brimming with life. Beneath its rustic charm lies its profound theological symbol: the six days of creation, the ordered unfolding of the world by the Word of God.

In the Genesis account, creation is …

On the Fifth Day of Christmas: Gold by Fire

Grace — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 01:56:53 GMT

How exciting right… The Law? On the Fifth Day of Christmas, the carol shifts beyond avairy themes to something a bit more concrete, and perhaps a bit more coveted.

No longer birds or gentle images, we are given five golden rings, a phrase that gleams with weight and permanence. Long before it was imagined as jewelry, this line was understood as symbolic…

On the Fourth Day of Christmas: The Beauty of the Crow

Grace — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 02:38:39 GMT

On the Fourth Day of Christmas, we cheerfully sing, “my true love gave to me … four calling birds.” and wonder when we will move past the birding phase.

Further still, most of us picture bright songbirds, but the early English lyric was actually “four colly birds,” an old term meaning blackbirds - birds as dark as coal.

This shift in language, from colly

On the Third Day of Christmas: The Greatest of these is Love

Grace — Sun, 28 Dec 2025 02:29:03 GMT

“For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13.12-23)

On the third day of Christmas, the authors of this carol carried on with the theme of aviat…

On the Second Day of Christmas: The Perfect Match

Grace — Sat, 27 Dec 2025 05:11:19 GMT

They say opposites attract, and while that may be true in some romantic settings and imaginations, there is something truly beautiful about a singularity of mind, vision, and purpose.

As the traditional Carol goes, the second day of Christmas gifts us Two Turtle Doves, a quiet foreshadowing of love, sacrifice, and the test of time.

Traditionally, these t…

On the First Day of Christmas

Grace — Fri, 26 Dec 2025 04:38:47 GMT

We can so easily treat The Twelve Days of Christmas as playful excess, a mark of our over consumption and larger than life American whims; too many birds, too many rings, simply too much.

Yet, the Church has always known that Christmas does not end on Christmas Day. It begins there. And hidden within this catchy carol is a catechism of love, sacrifice, …

Advent, Week 4: The Church as the Bride of Christ

Grace — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 03:18:57 GMT

Advent ends where it has been quietly pointing all along, the love of God made visible through the birth of his Son.

“The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”

The Word, the incarnate God, came into our human, broken world, and dwelt among us. For us.

God does not love us from a distance. He does not shout affection only from a lofty expanse in the heav…

Advent, Week 3: The Little Way of St Thérèse

Grace — Sun, 14 Dec 2025 17:19:03 GMT

As the Advent season continues, by the third week, the light starts to peek through. The waiting is not finished, the long nights have not yet lifted, and the world remains restless—but suddenly, joy breaks through.

Gaudete Sunday arrives like a blush on the horizon. Traditionally, a rose candle is lit, not because the dawn has fully come, but because i…

Advent, Week 2: An Istrument of Your Peace

Grace — Sun, 07 Dec 2025 17:17:05 GMT

Long before Jesus Christ entered the world as an infant, it was prophesied that he would come as:

“Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father,” and finally, “The Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9.6)

Isaiah’s prophecy emerges in a world much like ours: restless, divided, and aching for something steady.

Into that ache comes a promise: peace will not be …

Advent Week 1: The Hope of St John of the Cross

Grace — Sun, 30 Nov 2025 15:41:35 GMT

Advent begins where most of us avoid to dwell: in the dark. Yet, Scripture insists that the story of Salvation always begins this way; from very creation of light and dark, to the birth of our Savior - an in-breaking of eternal light to eternal darkness.

Before we reach the brightness of Christmas morning, Advent invites us to linger in the stillness a…

All Saint's Day: Saint Agnes

Grace — Sat, 01 Nov 2025 16:39:20 GMT

A friend recently asked me if I would share about Saint Agnes, and it got me thinking…

What if instead of viewing saints as idolatrous and distractions from Christ, as we’re so prone to do in the western evangelical tradition, we viewed them as spiritual guides and mentors on our journey?

We often look towards Abraham, Joseph, David, Peter, Paul, as pilla…