Assembled Into One
Date: 3/20/2022
Canvas: 48"x48"
[Not For Sale]
“...that they may be one, even as we are one…” —John 17:22
Pastor Jason Turner of Christian Faith Fellowship Church delivered a powerful message based on Hebrews 10:25--”Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together.” Jason used the example of a lego set, and how lots of pieces scattered around the floor look chaotic, but assembled into an X-wing Fighter you might say, ‘Wow, that’s pretty cool. I wish I was a kid again.’ Christians seem more separate than ever. As Christians we tend to group ourselves based on similarities of race or age or income, like the bags in a new lego box. On this Sunday, Christian Faith Fellowship joined together with Hope Covenant; two churches of predominantly different races came together as one and the atmosphere was electric!
I didn’t have a clue what I was going to paint this Sunday. At the beginning we had a ‘huddle’ where we held hands in a circle and prayed. My thinking was stirred and I kept seeing the image of looking upwards within a huddle, so I knew this was it. It reminds me of how confident and focused I would feel in the huddle between plays of a neighborhood two-hand-touch football game. I was a small part of the team, yet somehow, I felt bigger.
Halfway through the service I realized, the figures had taken on the form of the cross. The eternal--never-broken--unity of the Trinity pulling all people into The Eternal Huddle…The Father is in Jesus, and Jesus is in us through the Holy Spirit. “...I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one…” [John 17:23 King James Version] So, like a hand bone connected to the arm bone, as Jason said, it was Jesus’ own life radiating like light rays through the powerful singing and preaching and hallelujahs that lit up Jesus in me to make this painting. And we all got to play a small part of something very, very big…Unity.