Brown's Daily Word 2-27-13

Praise the Lord for this last Wednesday of February. We are in the midst of the Lenten Season, anticipating the glorious and victorious Easter Morning. We will gather today at 6 PM with a special meal followed by Bible study at 6:30 PM and then by a concert of prayer from 7:30 PM to 8:30 PM. The choir will practice at 7:30 PM. In Bible study we will be looking at Isaiah 53. The chapter is known as the Suffering Servant chapter. As we look at the passage through the passion and the resurrection of Jesus, we see clearly that it prophesied Jesus Christ at the Cross and also His glorious Resurrection.

I love the paintings of the British Artist Holman Hunt . One of his famous paintings is, "Light of the World", a life-sized painting. It is placed at St. Paul's Cathedral, London. Every time I have been to St. Paul's Cathedral I have taken time to gaze at this masterpiece.

Another masterpiece painting by Holman Hunt is titled "The Shadow of Death". This painting depicts the inside of the carpenter's shop in Nazareth. Stripped to the waist, Jesus stands by a wooden trestle on which He has put down His saw. He lifts His eyes toward heaven, and the look on His face is one of pain, ecstasy or both. He stretches, raising both arms above His head. As He does so, the evening sunlight streaming through the open door casts a dark shadow in the form of a cross on the wall behind Him, where His tool rack looks like a horizontal bar on which His hands have been crucified. The tools remind us of the fateful hammer and nails. In the left background, a woman kneels among the wood chippings, her hands resting on the chest in which the rich gifts of the Magi are kept. We cannot see her face because she has averted it, but we know it is Mary. She looks startled at her son's cross-like shadow on the wall.

Holman Hunt was the leader of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a19th-century artistic movement that had a reputation for sentimentality and surrealism. There were some serious and sincere artists, and Hunt was among them. He determined to "battle with the frivolous art of the day." He chose, in his work, to do battle with the superficial treatment of trite themes, so he spent 1870-1873 in the Holy Land and painted The Shadow of Death in Jerusalem from the roof of his house.

Though the idea is historically fictitious, it is theologically true. From Jesus' birth and youth, the cross cast its shadow ahead of Him. The cross is inextricably tied to the Person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Here an artist is so sensitive to the theme of Christianity he spent three years surveying the landscape of Jerusalem to paint the picture of the Christ succinctly, seriously, sincerely. If the artist can painstakingly take the brush seriously to paint the cross, how much more should we take the time to recognize the power of the cross?

During this Holy Season of Lent let us take time to pause and ponder on the "Wondrous Cross on which the Prince of Glory died".

In Christ,

Brown

http://youtu.be/Tkx8WAycYAc