Kamikaze Christmas
Date: December 1st, 2024
Cost: $500
Canvas: 24” x 30”
Doug told us that Christ’s birth is beautiful and worthy to be celebrated with presents and peppermint hot chocolate, but simultaneously it’s worthy to be revered as Heaven’s great invasion into our world which has been under the power of the evil one since The Fall. The scene is described vividly in Revelation 12: the Virgin is above the moon and the dragon (Satan) is waiting in front to devour the Christ child.
Two nights ago, I watched the movie Godzilla Minus One, in which a kamikaze (kami=‘divine, kaze=’wind’) pilot decimated Godzilla by getting him to swallow a bomb. I thought, ‘Ok, why not?’ In Godzilla, humankind betrays goodness, itself, by creating and exploding the atomic bomb which gave rise to Godzilla; likewise, Adam’s betrayal of God has given Satan power over the world. And like Godzilla, Satan succeeds at ‘devouring’ Christ (on the cross) but, in the process, Satan unwittingly destroys his own power over anyone who believes in Christ.
I painted Mary embracing Jesus as they descend to Earth like a meteor into the mouth of the dragon; a picture of the cosmic events of Christmas, but it also takes place inside each of us. That dragon is our old nature, which used to control us with fears, delusions, and doubts about God’s goodness…and will continue to lurk in the depths of our flesh until the Day of Redemption. Like that kamikaze pilot, Jesus struck our dragon with a payload of agape love and set us free. But, it’s only by believing the Good News that we get to live in (and expand) that freedom…freedom to fly missions of sacrifice so others can be saved…freedom to ride on the shoulders of ‘The Divine Wind.’
They overcame (the dragon)
by the blood of the Lamb
and by the word of their
testimony;
they did not love their lives so much
as to shrink from death. –Revelation 12:11