Week Two
December 5, 2021
Work in Progress
Philippians 1:3-11
I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ. Philippians 1:6
My mother is an artist. All my life I have been in an artistic environment, within a family of artists. I spent most of those early years around my mother’s art and watching her paint.
Artists see differently. Where I might see a tree or a person, my mother sees a leaf or a pair of hands. Upon a blank canvas she would begin using broad and sweeping strokes as she sketched the shapes. Then, these vague sketches would begin to take form, becoming clear and distinct.
As she prepared her palette with different colors of paint, I would imagine how those colors might be applied. I would be baffled as she began to apply the paint: mixing, combining, creating texture and leading the colors to follow her vision.
Soon, I was able to see these forms as a landscape, portrait or still life. Gradually, the painting would be revealed. I could see it. Then, my eyes saw what she had seen all along.
In this season of preparation, waiting and arrival we gather around the Artist once more. We have lived within a sketch of the world, jumbled and indistinct, plain and without color, empty of the form we long to see, to now stand in awe before the promised masterpiece of forgiveness and compassion, spoken of across our generations. Our eyes have been sharpened and grown accustomed, by faith, as we peer over the Artist’s shoulder, once more.
May this season of Advent become the living gallery in which our wandering sight opens wide and we fall upon our knees before a work of sprawling majesty, in which, we too are portrayed.
Dr. Terry Ewing
Vice President of Advancement
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
