Good question! I’ve been asking myself, and asking God, for the last eight years.

The answer I have today, is that an art ministry gives the world art that’s intended to be spiritually nourishing to people and to the world.

So is it a nonprofit enterprise? I thought so for a while. I like to complicate things.

I agonized about how the paintings can be accessible to people without much money, or without any money. I like to make rules, and lists, and other complications, preferably disguised as making things simpler.

Finally I heard God say “Sell some, give some away, and don’t make any rules about it.”

Here’s how it’s actually is supposed to work.

It’s a hierarchy.

What each painting wants trumps what I want. If a painting wants to be a certain way, I’m to make it that way even if I would like it better some other way. If a painting wants to go to place X, and price Y, that’s what I’m to follow. (You can see that sometimes this feels great, and sometimes it’s irksome.)

What Jesus wants trumps what the paintings want. This is newer, hasn’t always been at play. But any painting now on the website has been screened in by Jesus as acceptable good news.

So I’m at the bottom. I serve the paintings, and the paintings serve Jesus. OK then. I have enormous resistance to this, and I do believe it’s the way it should be. OK then.

You can see that this works only to the extent that I listen and obey. Yes, the “O” word. Not “Omicron” but “Obedience.” Not a popular term these days, and often confused with a lack of freedom, when it’s actually perfect freedom: the freedom of perfect obedience.

Maybe 2022 will be my Year of Obedience. Pray for me. Please.