[image: Valley Nursery, 2013, Dave Johanson]
1 Th 4:1–3
Finally then, brethren, we urge and exhort in the Lord Jesus that you should abound more and more, just as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God; 2 for you know what commandments we gave you through the Lord Jesus.
3 For this is the will of God, your sanctification:...
This is another particularly fine (IMHO) image Dave sent out this year. It combines the close detail, intentionally softened edges and enhanced saturation that combines realism with potential. In a sense it develops what is latent in the original image without abstracting it beyond our recognition. When I look at it, thinking from God's perspective if you will, it reminds me of the so-called "cultural mandate" given us in Gen. 1:28ff. Man was created to take in the world's latent beauty and, in exercising dominion, translate it from potential to reality. There is a sense in which Dave brought out the flower that is really there rather than presenting it as the eye beheld it in the nursery. The physical flower, by now, is long wilted and most likely rapidly disintegrating into compost, but the "real" flower, if you will, remains, captured in eternal and undying beauty in the mind of the photographer which is itself eternal. There are some things that Plato got right. This is one of them.
What is said here of a flower is also true of us fallen human beings. God in contemplating us, as we might think of Him, looks at us the same way. His will for us is our sanctification. His commands to us, given for our guidance and obedience, is His way of processing us, if you will. Through His indwelling Spirit enabling and empowering us, He turns our steps, more or less willingly, to the pathways of His righteousness and through His loving and chastening hand, brings out in us those potential "lustres" which are hidden, again if you will, in our regenerated hearts. There is within us the seed of perfection, the fullness of which will be manifest only in glory, but which is already fully known by the mind of God who sees us now as we shall be then. Sanctification is growth in conformity to that which we already are.
All this is to say that as we look upon the world about us, to see the even deeper latent beauty present in it, with an eye toward first protecting that beauty and then developing it (the idea of exercising dominion), we should and must also see our own lives in that regard. Each of us who have been born-again have thereby been assured that we are part of the mosaic of God's work in progress... the color we contribute is to be glorious... our sanctification is the movement of our soul and will in that direction followed by our physical conformity. Let's do away with this whole idea of God's righteous commands on our life as being burdensome... let's see them for what they are... the instrument of the Master, designed to perfectly accomplish His purpose in our lives, our sanctification.
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