Bryan Ickes

Follower of Jesus | Husband & Father | Professional Designer | Amateur Gardener | Lifelong Student

[bryanickes-blog]

On the need for inadequacy for Christian usefulness

Of all the contexts where boasting is inappropriate, this surely heads the list:

…Any genuine experience of God is a gift of his love and provides no basis for us to elevate ourselves. Says Bengal, ‘How dreadful must self-exaltation be if the Apostle [Paul] required such restraint — that God intervened in his life, at the deepest level of his physicality, in order to ensure that he would understand that actually it was in his experience of weakness and inadequacy that his greatest usefulness was to be found. And though he asks, his thorn is not removed, because it becomes the conduit of God’s power.

When I am weak, then I am strong.

Here, I suggest to you, is the principle of all effective service. And this is why some of us will never amount to anything for God. Because we revolt against this principle.

The glory does not lie in our inadequacy, but lies in the adequacy of Christ, which is discovered in our weakness and in our insufficiency.

- Allistair Begg (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9wFLMl2-_I)

[misererelent]

For his anger is but for a moment, and his favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning. Psalm 30:5 • • • • • • • • • • Perhaps the Father and Spirit alone witnessed the resurrection in that black cave, when their beloved companion’s heart...

[misererelent]

I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.

John 11:25

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Holy Saturday seems an odd name for the day Israel awakes from her sleep into a world whose light has been extinguished.

What are the disciples to do with...

[misererelent]

What will you do on the day of the appointed festival, and on the day of the feast of the LORD?

For behold, they are going away from destruction; but Egypt shall gather them; Memphis shall bury them. Nettles shall possess their precious things of silver; thorns shall be in their tents.

[misererelent]

This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that the same event happens to all. Also, the hearts of the children of man are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead.

Ecclesiastes 9:3

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How are we to...

[misererelent]

This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. John 15:12

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Prior to the ascent on The Place of the Skull, Pilate’s soldiers circle about Jesus, sneering, “Hail, King of the Jews!” and strike him with their hands. Pilate then ...

[misererelent]

Day 23 | Plate 22 Of so many different domains, the noble work of sowing in hostile land.

He turns rivers into a desert, springs of water into thirsty ground, a fruitful land into a salty waste, because of the evil of its inhabitants. He turns a desert into pools of water, a parched land into springs of water. And there he lets the hungry dwell, and they establish a city to live in; they sow fields and plant vineyards and get a fruitful yield.

Psalm 107:33-37

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Unless God himself prepares the place for us, as he did Eden, and is now preparing in his Father’s mansion, God swore that our relationship with the earth would be strained.

In this scene, the sower and his house are lean and simple. Both reveal a life of subsistence. Work is a means for survival; nothing more than a means to live another day and a chance to collect more memories of God’s goodness.

He has known sadness, doubt and fear. He has watched his seeds wither and burn. He’s awoken to see the spores of some pestilence quickly wilting his field. He’s heard the ravaging beasts pillage his field during the night. He has lain in bed, too sick to crawl and gather the ripening fruit before it fell to the swirling pests. He’s doubted he has what it takes.

The weatherbeaten farmer has suffered, but the void it has etched in his soul is also reservoir for delight. For the fruits of each harvest have become the symbol of his celebration. Beyond sustaining the life of his household, they punctuate each rolling year as memorials of God’s enduring fidelity.

He has paced his field many times, and he knows where the stones lie embedded and where the fertile patches are. Each season, he carves the soil and watches the earth envelope the seeds. He waits long days, and when the rain comes, he bursts from is hut dancing as David before God. The tender plants join his dance in the rain, drinking deep of the dew of heaven and shining in their emerald way as Moses did after his descents from Sinai.

Like the farmer, wherever we go, the harvests we long for will only come after our anticipation and disillusionment, education and forgetfulness; joy and grief. Often, the greatest harvests will come to the most diligent farmers, but not always. Whatever the work he has given us, the harvest is a gift from his hands. Each is a miracle.

The harvests are our manna along our desert wandering until we reach the mountain of God, adorned in His holiness, and finally ascend to his everlasting embrace. Only then, we will want no more.

[misererelent]

Today in America, most of us have never experienced a clearly delineated class system. The title of this plate likely conjures images from films of porcelain beauties, glimmering beneath embroidered materials and precious stones. These were the southern belles; the aristocracy of Europe, and...

[misererelent]

The Herald:

The spirit of The Lord GOD is upon me, because The LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound…to grant to those who mourn in...

[laughingsquid]

Dubstep Dancing by iGlide to “Levitate” by Hadouken

[bryanickes-blog]

This is incredible. I keep watching it!

[bryanickes-blog]

Plate Six | Are We Not Convicts? ----- Thus says the Lord: “In a time of favor I have answered you; in a day of salvation I have helped you; I will keep you and give you as a covenant to the people, to establish the land, to apportion the desolate heritages, saying to the prisoners, ‘Come out,’ to those who are in darkness, ‘Appear.’ They shall feed along the ways; on all bare heights shall be their pasture; they shall not hunger or thirst, neither scorching wind nor sun shall strike them, for he who has pity on them will lead them, and by springs of water will guide them. Isaiah 49:8-10 ----- “Are We Not Convicts? What a way to begin a conversation! This is a rhetorical question asked among those sentenced. Yes, Rouault, we don't usually feel the weight of it, but it is sadly as you say. Each of us wanders, knowing alone the hurt we've each committed; the bridges we've burned, the goodness we intended but never acted upon. I have heard that the book of Deuteronomy is referred to as The Wilderness in the Hebrew bible. I bet more people would explore these pages, revealing God's purposes during the desert exile, if we too inherited this title. We long for the comfort and familiarity of home, but we'd much sooner listen to a story that takes place in the wilderness. Why? Because, the wilderness has no interest in preserving our tranquility. It is a place of testing. It is place where our longings, normally kept tucked and groomed, are exposed and then chafed and made raw. The wilderness either kills us, or we're rescued from it. Israel's origin was a verdant place of safety, community and joy. It had so much peace that it requires a redefinition of what *home* looks like, for walls and a roof are not needed in a place specifically made *for* us. But the joys of Eden are foreign to us now, and Scripture alone can reveal such harmony to us in the wilderness places we each inhabit. For when we tried to take over the house, the Owner kicked us out. He kicked us out, not with the intention to abandon us, but to incite a lifelong journey of discovery. A story that he would resolve back where we began; having come to know him as Father and not merely the Law. Home is in the distance in Rouault's sixth plate. We're all stripped naked, and we're not an attractive lot. The man in the foreground, though he wears no chained cuffs on his wrists, yet feels the bite of the metal. He knows his condition. He continues by the ever so faint hope that in the end, all will be well; that the Voice he hears in the heights proclaims a truth more real than the sun baking cancer into his flesh and the uncertainty ever tempting him to collapse into the dust forever. “In an acceptable time"...he keeps repeating the promise given him, “in an acceptable time…have I heard…have I helped…”

[misererelent]

We hide from suffering. But when it finds us; too often by surprise, it has an otherworldly intensity that can — in a moment — erase all the structure and aspirations that we thought gave shape to our life.

As Abraham and his wandering sons after him were compelled to do, piling stones,...

[bryanickes-blog]

There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what is not true. The other is not to believe what is true. Soren Kierkegaard

[bryanickes-blog]

How to Succeed as a Graphic Designer (or in Any Other Vocation)

After spending numerous hours this week on Twitter, Dribbble and Pinterest, I’ve noticed a host of talented designers, many of whom are proficient in the current trends and are striving for fluency of expression. And yet, with some digging around, it’s apparent that there are “inner rings” who are not categorically more talented than others, but are those who have achieved notoriety from moments of punctuated brilliance (often through their ability to communicate about what they do; not just doing it). As a result, their expressions have been catapulted into the stars by media channels, and those watching are then guided for a time, orienting their styles according to the constellation of designers and spokesmen most associated with the latest trend.

Design trends are as complicated as the stock market. There is no single way to explain them, but the shifting of trends becomes observable over time. I see Apple’s clean and shiny interface being eclipsed by the flatter and more colorful info-graphic style made immensely popular by GOOD Magazine and massively so through Google’s redesign. Microsoft, too long a follower, confirms this to be the case with the launch of Windows 8, which takes the style to the hilt with extreme flatness and retro colors.

The gritty style of the early 2000’s, and the smooth gradients in the latter half of the decade, have synthesized into a hybrid consisting of faint textures and gradients over stark iconography due, in part, to the DIY craze on Etsy and Pinterest; both of which are threaded with a nostalgia for an analogue life as we are ever being pulled away into the digital ether.

I anticipate that the next trend, in a couple more years, will shift from dusty primary to jazzy secondary and tertiary colors with faint patterns for texture, rather than grit; possibly with a floral theme. But my opinion doesn’t really matter. Social media and design experts are everywhere. Their voices are an endless stream of noise.

For those longing to find their way, the heart of the matter is captured in this timeless Biblical proverb:

Do you see a man skillful in his work? He will stand before kings; he will not stand before obscure men.

Everything boils down to skill, and the only way—the only way—to attain skill is by experience, and lots of it.

Those that rise to the top of the game have developed such a familiarity and delight in their craft that they do not hear the siren’s endless cries online. Their craft speaks to them, providing questions and revealing the answers as they are earned. They invest their attention on their trade, not lusting after what others have made. They are being transformed through their labor. The school of hard knocks is the only school. Every other steals your heart.

This is the eternal demand of the artist, whatever the field. There is no satisfaction apart from submitting to it. No amount of networking or talk can substitute for the stark truth of a powerful idea, beautifully expressed.