"Windows of the Soul by Ken Gire"

Years ago, when I first started freelance writing, I wrote ad copy for a ministry that sold books through mail order. One of the books on my list was Windows of the Soul by Ken Gire. Both the subtitle Experiencing God in New Ways and the black dust jacket with the sun rising in a window pulled me in, and the one-page introduction hooked me. Since then Gire, a speaker and award-winning author who has written over twenty books including The North Face of God, Divine Embrace, The Work of His Hands, the “Moments with the Savior” series, and the "Reflective Life" series, has become one of my favorite contemporary writers.

In Windows of the Soul, he writes, “We reach for God in many ways. Through our sculptures and our scriptures. Through our pictures and our prayers. Through our writing and our worship. And through them He reaches for us…Our search for God and His search for us meet at windows in our everyday experience. These are the windows of the soul.” Because we long for intimacy with God and He with us, God uses many aspects of life to meet us on an intimate level, aspects such as vocation, stories, art, movies, poetry, memory, dreams, scripture, tears, and nature.

As I read, I felt as though I had somehow expanded inside. While Gire shared stories about windows where God met him and other people, I began remembering times and places where God had met me. I had had experiences of intimacy with Him but had never articulated them—or perhaps even recognized them for what they were. Gire helped me identify them and sharpened my sense of awareness of God reaching out to me so that from then on, I was looking for windows of the soul.

Art for me is one of those windows. I believe God can use art to reach out to us, to show us more of Himself, and to draw us closer to Him. Maybe art is one of your windows too? If so, email me and tell me about it. I’d love to hear from you.