Holy Spirit Fall
Date: January 12th, 2025
Canvas: 24” x 30”
Date: December 23rd, 2018
Doug talked about how God’s love is more than just an idea or emotion, that the nature of God’s love is most importantly ACTION: that Love Acts. And we know from the Bible that His greatest act of love was the giving of His Son to us as a gift. Doug talked about our action in this gift exchange--to receive the gift. To receive Jesus means to allow Jesus to be our very LIFE. Doug wove in Jesus’ Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard--the ones who ‘had it all together’ got indignant when the landowner paid the same wage (meaning gave the same status) to the ones who ‘were down and out,’ or had ‘messed up’ in life then joined in the labor only at the eleventh hour. So, it’s not about us proving ourselves worthy, but God recklessly lavishing His love on each us. And when we trust Jesus this reckless Love pours out of us—Love Acts as we ‘spring off the couch’ and give away OUR very lives as a gift.
For the image, I had no idea what to paint to describe the greatest act of love. The opening song was Angels We Have Heard on High--and got a vision of angels soaring and darting through the night sky in total jubilation.
Then, I thought about overlaying a figure of a man pulling his own heart out and giving it away as a gift. But when Doug started talking about reckless love, it felt right to leave the image abstract and wild, without definable form--unpredictable and mysterious--a fire whipping and swirling in the wind--all-consuming while at the same time giving life.
For this is how much God loved the world—he gave his one and only, unique Son as a gift. So now everyone who believes in him will never perish but experience everlasting life. —John 3:16