"A God-bathed world"

 A shout out to Kendal Ackerman who each week in Lent has been placing one or two framed posters of paintings by Van Gogh in the sanctuary, accompanied by devotional writing to tease out the connections between Van Gogh’s artistic vision of the world and the season of Lent. This Sunday – Easter Sunday – the culminating image was “The Raising of Lazarus.” Others images on display include “The Starry Night,” “Worn Out/At Eternity’s Gate” and “Still Life with Bible.”

This quote on the leaflet to do with “The Starry Night” particularly caught my eye: “[Van Gogh’s] paintings reveal a more biblical vision of reality – one in which heaven and earth intersect to form what Dallas Willard called a ‘God-bathed world.’ We occupy a cosmos filled with God’s presence the way liquid fills a sponge.” (Quote from author and podcaster Skye Jethani)

All of the write ups coordinated by Kendal can be found here.









Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ways of staying connected

Tim Woodcock writes: In these strange times, under the shadow of Covid-19, our economy is temporarily stripped down to the basics. The shopping malls are empty but the parks are full. Our workplaces, schools, and community organizations are migrating into our homes. Everything feels off-kilter. Churches worldwide are asking themselves how can they operate in the absence of regular services and the use of a physical building. This blog is an attempt to make an online space in which the Second Pres. community can stay connected and can offer each other spiritual sustenance and encouragement. I'd like to invite people to share their spiritual insights related to the pandemic experience: spiritual revelations, great and small; new appreciations and evolving understandings; reflections on what you've been reading and watching recently; hopes for the future. If you have an idea of something you'd like to write about, please drop me a line at timwoodcock [AT] speedpost.net . ...
Read more

Patience is better than pride

Tim Woodcock writes: While we wait for the election results, a word that has risen to new-found prominence is patience . I am sure that after the fact we could run a search on transcripts of all the news reporting and commentary from the last few days and see a massive spike in the use of the word. That led me to think, what exactly does the good book, have to say about patience? There’s no shortage of Bible verses to choose from. Using Bible Gateway  to find translations that favored patience over near-synonym “perseverance” and “steadfastness,” here’s what caught my eye.   Romans 5:3-4 says, ”We also boast in tribulation, knowing that tribulation produces patience,  patience produces character, and character produces hope.” (Modern English Version). “We boast in tribulation” is translated as “we glory in suffering” in the NIV.   2 Peter 1:5-9 takes a similar idea of how one virtue builds upon another. “For this reason make every effort to add virtue to y...
Read more

God wrestling

Tim Woodcock writes: At the weekend we attended a (virtual) Bat Mitzvah for our niece. One of the many fascinating parts of the service was when the rabbi addressed the congregation as “God wrestlers.” What an intriguing phrase! It sent me down a rabbit hole of research that I’m not going to recount here. But wouldn’t it be interesting if Christian congregations started using that phrase, too?
Read more

Labels

Show more