Things Above vs. Things Below

Last weekend, our church café hosted an exhibition of my artwork. Never for a single moment had I imagined such a day would come. What began as a quiet pastime—filling blank spaces with calligraphy and simple watercolors—soon became a genuine joy. Whenever I visited congregation members to bless a new business or dedicate a new home, I brought along a framed piece. Over the years those small tokens accumulated into an exhibition that still feels almost surreal to me. As works of art, their merit is modest indeed. Yet our members welcomed each piece warmly because their pastor had painted it by hand for their visit, and that affection bore the fruit we see today.

While pondering a theme for the exhibition, I remembered the words of Colossians 3: “Seek the things that are above,” and “Set your minds on things that are above.” Fittingly, my expository volume on Colossians, "Clothe Yourselves with Jesus Alone!", came off the press today and met our congregation first. As I remarked from the pulpit when preaching that passage, seeking the things above is the most powerful way to live inside today’s reality. Fix your gaze on heaven alone and people will quickly call you impractical. Yet those who seek the things above gain both heaven and earth, whereas those who chase only earthly things lose both.

A memory from last week’s trip to Alaska suddenly crosses my mind. While chatting with local residents, we all burst out laughing when I heard that Alaskans call people from the continental United States “the folks from down below.” The nickname carried a cheerful pride in living farther north, high up near the Arctic Circle. It occurred to me that believers are, in a spiritual sense, the people truly called to live with their eyes on the heights. We are not “people of the lowlands,” bound to worldly standards and earthly values. We are “people of the heights,” following the law of God’s kingdom and longing for the sacred treasures of heaven.

This exhibition was never meant to show off the results of a hobby. Rather, it offered a deeply rewarding occasion to meditate together on Scripture traced by an imperfect brush and to confirm anew where our true “above” lies. Having walked the road of pastoral ministry, I now name the chapter that awaits me after retirement “Things Above Ministries (TAM)” and dream a fresh dream. Even after I step down from active pulpit ministry, my gaze toward the kingdom of God will never turn downward. Longing ever more deeply for spiritual realities, I resolve to spend the rest of my life seeking and pursuing the things above until my final breath. When we seek what is above with hearts devoted to the things of God, I trust that He will fill our earthly lives with His richest beauty and abundance.