A couple weeks ago I preached a message working through Van Gogh’s art and the inbreaking of the Kingdom of God. It was a really fun one, partly inspired by this book.
My favorite bit was on Van Gogh’s famous Starry Night painting. Van Gogh was really intentional with his colors using blue for mystery and the infinite, and yellow for divine sacred love.
You can see how he had a real sense of earth being a reflection of heaven. The yellow holy light is laced across the fields and echoed in every little home, except one… the church.
It’s as if to say that hints of the divine are everywhere you look in all creation, but ironically Van Gogh didn’t feel that it was in the church (He was a pastor/missionary before seriously painting).
What do you think? Do you see truth in it today? How might the church regain it’s glow?
Yesterday we had live painting during our gathering. I love what my friend Phil created on the spot.
Our community celebrated the resurrection Easter Sunday by a wonderful time of worship and painting.
I wanted to reflect on the Road to Emmaus that morning and Marty had passed me a wonderful idea that I just ran with. In the story, the Scriptures state “Their eyes were opened” when the travelers realize Christ was among them. This can be seen as very much a parallel to Adam and Eve’s eyes being open after eating the fruit. Except rather than opening their eyes to sin, evil, and death, with the resurrection their eyes became opened to life and hope and beauty.
As a community we reflected, painted and shared on what or eyes have been, or might be opened to, if the resurrection were true. Even the ‘older folks’ seemed to really enjoy the experience!
I had planned for people to simply take their tile home after the whole experience but no one wanted to separate their work from the whole. Maybe if we ever get a building we’ll tack it up somewhere permanently.
Though the cross is empty, it’s now filled with all our hopes and dreams… cause He is risen.
by Lon on December 4, 2007
An interesting image that’s been going around lately.
It’s by an artist named Lars Justinen from the Justinen Creative Group.
What do you think?
