If At First You Don’t Succeed…

Some time ago I created the web comic CREACHER. My hope was that it would be shared all over the web as a way of spreading the Gospel. While it got a few followers, it didn’t really do what I was hoping it would do. I wanted it to work like a social media meme, but it kind of fell flat. I’ve posted over 200 of the cartoons and I began to feel like it was a bomb. I contemplated dropping it, but then I got another idea. Maybe part of the reason it didn’t work like a meme was because it didn’t look like a meme. I started looking at the other memes that are out there and decided to regroup, reformat and rework the concept.

This is the result:

What do you think of them?

The bottom line in all of our creative pursuits is some of them will fail. That’s what happens when you try something new. Sometimes the best thing you can do with a failure is count it a lesson learned and move on. Sometimes though, especially when you felt led in your Spirit to create something, it’s better not to write it off, but rather to look at it with fresh eyes and do something different.

Something to Remember

Forgiveness is as much for you as it is for the one you are forgiving. What you hold on to, you allow to hurt you over and over again. I need this today. Hopefully it will help someone else too. Let it go and forgive.

IllustrationFriday.com challenge: Glow

The challenge word for the week is Glow, so I decided to let my friends at Creacher have a shot at it. Here’s what came out.

In John 1, John refers to Jesus as the light come into the world, which is what we celebrate at Christmas. The light of Jesus overcomes the Darkness of our sin sick world. Jesus later called His people the light of the world, and then He said that we need to let our lights shine before men so that they may see our good deeds and praise our Father in Heaven. In other words…

GLOW!

The end of the world…

Well we made it. If the Mayans were right today is the end of the world. I seriously doubt this to be true, after all Jesus said “No one will know the day or the hour…” but here’s the thing. Just because the whole world does not end doesn’t mean it won’t end for some. The mortality rate in this world is nearly 100 percent. You might be thinking, “Wow uplifting post, Dave” but please hear me out. You see, the truth is I believe we should live each day as if it were our last. This doesn’t mean we live fatalistically, not should we live hedonistically. No, we should make the most of each opportunity, of each day. We should choose to live a life that matters. We should choose to face life optimistically. We should make the most of our lives. We should choose to invest time in the people we love and we should do it all to the glory of God.

Is this the last day? Most likely, no, but make the most of it. Make great art or make the day a work of art. Spend time with the people you love. Serve somebody. Make a difference. Start something exciting and new and in the midst of it all, praise the One whose birth we celebrate in just a few days, who came to give us a hope beyond this world.

Maybe the end of the world as we know it isn’t such a bad thing, especially if we are living to make a new and better world.

A Little Humor: 25 Reasons Jesus is Better Than Santa

Okay, here’s what happened. It’s the third of December and I am already aggravated at the number of posts and articles and memes (oh my!) I’ve seen that complain about Christians who think it’s important to keep Christ in Christmas as well as the usual suing to remove the manger stories and on and on and on. I’m pretty tired of it. It’s called Christmas because it’s about Christ! I could have gone at it and made a bunch of angry curmudgeonly posts or I could put my gift to work. I decided to do the latter and so I give you 25 Reasons Jesus is Better Than Santa. Here’s the first one.

If you want to see them all follow the Creacher blog at creachertoons.wordpress.com

Behind the Scenes: The Making of CREACHER, Cause and Effect

I decided to give you a behind the scenes view on how a CREACHER cartoon is made. This one is called Cause and Effect. It’s inspiration comes from numerous stories I’ve heard recently in the media and other places. They were very diverse and yet they all had one thing in common. In every case blame was being thrown at someone else. parents, strangers, society, even God. That’s usually not the case. In some cases we are just getting splattered by the effects of living in a broken world, but in more cases than not, the story behind the story is one of cause and effect. Understanding cause and effect is crucial. We feed cause with our choices and effect comes back to bite us. We don’t dare interpret this for others, that’s called being judgmental, but it is vital that we interpret cause and effect for ourselves.

Thoughts from Creacher: Light of the World

In an upcoming CREACHER comic, he explores what it means to be the light of the world and I thought it was worth looking at in connection with our creative pursuits. Here’s the comic…

In Matthew 5:14-16 Jesus calls us the light of the world and he gives us a pretty clear mission. People are supposed to see the good stuff we do and praise God. How are you doing with that?

You see it’s great to be creative and it’s great to do creative stuff. I am of the opinion that we were created to create (among other things). There are a few problems with this though. The first one is we withhold our gifts. We fail to share our creations with the world because we think they’re not good enough or we’re not good enough or we’re afraid someone might steal them or whatever excuse we want to put out there. The truth is withholding your creations is like putting your lamp under the bowl instead on the stand where it belongs. When we do this, we fail to shine.

The other side though is also a problem. That’s when the creating stops being about God and becomes just about us. That also defeats the purpose. We are supposed to let our lights shine so that people see them and praise God.

I’m convinced that we really don’t have light of our own, but that what we create bears witness to the true light, the source of our light, Jesus Christ. We have to shine and it has to be about Him.

Sometimes You Just Need to Laugh

It even mentions AMOK though spelled wrong. This is Chuck Jones at his best.

I present Duck Amuck for no other reason than just to make you laugh, ’cause sometimes you need to.

A Reminder from CREACHER

Everybody is a leader of someone. Where are you leading them?

Michael Hyatt Quote on Perfectionism

I was reading Michael Hyatt’s great book Platform(have I mentioned every creative needs to read this book?) and I happened upon this quote, “Perfectionism is the mother of procrastination.” This is amazingly true. If you don’t believe me, how many projects have you created that will never see the light of day? How many things have you made that just aren’t perfect enough in your mind? You do realize that art is a gift that is pretty meaningless unless we give it, right? Work on it give it your best and then in the words of Seth Godin and Steve Jobs, “ship it!” Remember “Real artists ship”

Your best work released imperfect is forgivable, after all no one is perfect. What is nearly unforgivable is depriving the world of a priceless gift. Give up the paralysis of analysis, forget your fear and present your gift. It will touch the hearts it’s supposed to touch and to the critics, they’re too busy cutting your gift apart to give their own and you don’t really have time for that do you?