Friends! I am thrilled to share with you this collaboration with The Gathering at Edenton Street United Methodist Church that we did for Palm Sunday, Holy Week and Easter worship. I'm putting this together really just for myself if nothing else. To have a place to pull together the videos, sermons, photos from this project in one place.
While this painting was meant to be shared, in-person at our Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday services - I am thrilled that we could video and share the process of the painting with our church family. COVID-19 disrupted our lives. And it feels strange that this all happened during Lent and prevented us all from being together for Holy Week and Easter.
But this post and this painting is not about COVID-19. It's about our own personal sin, brokenness, pain. It's about the brokenness and darkness of the world. Lent is a time when we reflect on these things. The things that separate us from God. The things that put Jesus on that cross. We sent out a link to an anonymous survey to our church family. The survey asked the responder to reflect on their sin, brokenness and pain and respond - anonymously - with those words. I then prayerfully wrote these words on the canvas. Almost as an act of giving these things over to God. Painting over the words, considering how they separate us from God. The final painting depicting that separation and remembering Jesus's journey to the cross.
Then during Holy Week I painted over this painting. I wanted it to represent the restoration, the new life that we have because of Jesus's resurrection. Jesus brings new life. Jesus restores. He makes us brand new.
Some scripture that inspired me in creating this painting:
If you have the time, I'd love for you to watch the videos of our 2020 Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday services. These include worship music, videos of the paintings above, and sermons of hope. See links below:
These paintings were a JOY to work on. This turned out to be a unique and wonderful way for me to turn my eyes to God each time I worked on this painting. It reminded me that worship doesn't just have to look like being at church singing songs. In fact - in this time of COVID-19 - we can't do that right now. So I've found worship in my every day to be things like painting, walking outside, exercising and being grateful for my health and that I can move my body. What does worhsip look like for you?