HE Lives In yoU & Me

Helium Art, LLC

Here I am Lord, send me, was Isaiah’s answer when the Lord asked, who will I send, who will go for us?   This was the beginning of Isaiah prophetic ministry in Isaiah 6.  He was to proclaim to Judah that the judgement of the Lord was coming.  But there was hope...”so the holy seed will be the stump in the land.”    Judah was hard of hearing and hard of understanding.  Their hearts were calloused and their ears dull.  They closed their eyes to things of the Lord. Judea would be wiped out all but a tenth of His people, whom God deemed as the holy seed from which Jesus would be born.

Sound familiar?  Fast forward some 2700 years later.  God’s people now include Gentiles through the grace of Jesus’s death and resurrection.  If you believe that Jesus is God’s son, that he was the only perfect human that ever lived, that he was crucified by a horrific death on a cross, was buried in a sealed tomb and after 3 days He conquered death and the grave by rising from the dead. Then you are God’s person.  If you believe this with all your heart, you are made new. But what does ‘made new’ mean?  

It means you are God’s child and when you understand the significance of that, you choose to live your life according to God’s plan for your life. In Romans 12:2 it says Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – His good, pleasing, and perfect will.

The Lord impressed on me that His people need to be encouraged to finish the race. I said Lord, how can I do that. He said, you want to paint, and you want to write. I said, Lord, I don’t know how to paint. He said Karen, anyone can learn to paint. It’s not about your pictures, it’s not even about You. So, my ministry is about helping people keep their focus on God through my words and pictures and actions.  Disclaimer: Oh, and this was not an audible conversation.  I didn’t have a burning bush moment. But I know without doubt, this was from the Lord. It was my voice, but not my words.

So, the Lord impressed me to paint balloons.  My first response was, balloons are not in the Bible to which the Lord replied, Karen, I made helium, and I made the elements to create latex balloons. I said OKAY. I waited for a while before I started to see if He would change His mind. He did not. I went out and bought some balloons.  I blew one up and started tracing it on my canvas.  I showed Thomas, my husband, and he liked it.  So, I started painting the balloons.  How would balloons encourage people to keep going?  Don’t Give Up, was the impression I got.  You may get a different impression. Regardless, I hope the Lord will give you a lighter spirit.

So, I want to be serious about my art and so I asked the Lord how I could I put it altogether.  I tried to think of an acronym for Helium.  But I could not think of a thing that made sense.  Until one morning at 4:30, I was awakened by an urge to write this down.  He Lives In yoU & Me.  That’s it. Thank you, Holy Spirit. You are beyond Great. I got up and wrote it down. And that is how Helium Art was born.

The urge was: Consider balloons.  You can buy a bag of them at the store.  Take one out.  It is lifeless.  When you blow air into it, it becomes more buoyant. It can become a decoration or a plaything for children.   But still, it has no direction.  The wind tosses it all around.  It gets kicked around and poked at to keep it in the air. Sometimes you blow it up, let it go and it flies around the room backwards. But it always comes back to earth.  However, when we realize what Jesus did for us and we learn of His love for us, we are filled with His spirit, like a Helium balloon.  The wind may blow, and they may sway, but if we have a firm foundation, we straighten back up.  Did you know that the element helium has such a low boiling point that it is used to cool nuclear reactors?  God’s spirit calms us when we get mad to boiling over. Did you also know that helium is so light that the earth has no gravitational pull on it?  Do not conform to the world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Sometimes, in the store, you will notice helium balloons are a little squishy, but if you buy it, the cashier can refill it.  Just like we need to be refilled by coming to church, praying, and reading our Bibles every single day. Did you know that when helium is released, it leaves this world, making it the only nonrecoverable element.   When we die, our spirit is released back to God.

The reason for Helium Art is this. There is a lot of hurt in our world. Christians are not exempt from pain and suffering. We are not. We are all going through something, we would rather not deal with.  But through it, God is growing us.  Remember that in Romans 5:3-5 – Not only so, but we rejoice in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance which produces character and character produces hope.  And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.  This hope is not wishful thinking.  It is the confidant belief that we are cared for and loved by God.  Think about that for a moment.  If the Creator of the Universe, who created you, knows the number of hairs on your head, don’t you think He wants to give you that confident hope that tomorrow will be better?  He does, without doubt. Believe it and claim it.