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Anointing Jesus’ Feet
This morning, I read the story of Mary the sister of Lazarus anointing Jesus with costly perfume in the week before he was crucified (John 12:1-11). That reminded me of a similar scene from earlier in Jesus’ life when a sinful woman wet his feet with her tears while he was dining at the home of a Pharisee (Luke 7:36-50). I did a prayer sketch based on that scene, starting with Rien Poortvliet’s rendition of it in He Was One of Us, then modifying it by sketching myself rather than the woman in Poortvliet’s sketch. As I sketched myself in the scene, not worrying about making a finished drawing but…
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A Lenten Wilderness Sketching Journey
In the past five weeks of Lent, I’ve been meditating on the thought of being with Jesus in the wilderness. While we don’t have much geographical wilderness in our part of New York, there are other sorts of wilderness we can find ourselves in. Physical wilderness due to illness or injury; relational wilderness due to loneliness or broken relationships; emotional wilderness of grief and other hurts; spiritual wilderness of not knowing God or of not sensing his presence. I’ve found myself drawn to passages of Scripture that describe the challenges or express the anguish and longings that such wilderness experiences evoke, and while I’ve meditated on these passages, I’ve spent…
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Sketching as Prayer Retreat January 4, 2025
We’re fast approaching the annual turning of the calendar. For many, that’s a night for staying up late, playing games, watching the New Year’s Eve ball drop, and toasting the New Year. In my home growing up, we would open the back door to “let the old year out” and the front door to “let the new year in” right at the stroke of midnight. These days I tend to be sound asleep long before midnight, preferring to rise early on the first day of a new year. For me, that first morning is like the sparkling of sunlight on a fresh snowfall, as yet unmarked by footprints, or like…
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Reflecting God’s light
I was ambling along the Rail Trail this morning when I saw a tree with one of its multiple trunks brightly lit by sunlight. Not an unusual sight, but what caught my attention was that I could also see the sun behind the tree, where it couldn’t possibly be shining on the side of the trunk that I saw. And yet, a portion the tree’s trunk was brightly lit. The sun’s light was reflecting off another trunk closer to me and back onto the one I was seeing. As I sketched the tree, I meditated on how, as God’s people, we are to reflect God’s light in our lives and…
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The Apple of God’s Eye
This past week our church had a “Sabbath Week,” when all meetings and other programming were canceled. At the beginning of the week our pastor sent out an email saying this was a time to “REST from our church responsibilities, REFLECT on who Christ is and who we are in Him, and to RENEW our hearts and minds in the good soil of God’s grace so that we will be a people who flourish under His care.” What a gift! We were away from home during the week, visiting one of our sons and his family, so I wasn’t sure if I would have a chance to really engage with the…
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Sketching as Prayer Retreat September 24-27
Tuesday, September 24 – Friday, September 27, 2024 “Earth’s crammed with heaven,And every common bush afire with God,But only he who sees takes off his shoes;The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.”Elizabeth Barrett Browning Seeing heaven here on earth and recognizing God’s presence, whether in the wildness of a burning bush or in the shifting colors of autumn trees, requires slowing down, stepping aside from our busyness, and becoming receptive to what we haven’t yet perceived. Sketching can be a pathway to seeing, to noticing the ways God is speaking through creation, and to becoming aware of his presence in the world around us. In the process we are drawn…
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Sketching as Prayer Lenten Retreat
I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead. I want to suffer with him, sharing in his death, so that one way or another I will experience the resurrection from the dead!Philippians 3: 10-11 Who wants to suffer? It’s not something we typically choose, nor should we without good reason. But Jesus did choose to suffer because of his tremendous love for us. He chose to enter into our suffering here on earth, in order to give us life. Lent is a season during which we choose to identify with Jesus, sharing in his sufferings, not for some morbid fascination with suffering, but…
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New Year’s Retreat Rescheduled to January 20th
I wasn’t planning to start the new year with bronchitis (nor spend Christmas with flu and a stomach bug), but we can’t always plan our days neatly. Thankfully, all the days ordained for us are written in God’s book (Psalm 139:16) and we can trust that we are in his plan, even when our plans seem to fall through. Because I am not up to much yet, nor do I want to share any germs I might still be harboring, I am rescheduling our New Year’s retreat for Saturday, January 20th. Please email me if you would like to attend. I’m hoping that by rescheduling, some people who were unable…
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New Year’s Retreat: January 6
We’re just days away from 2024—a new year, a chance for a fresh start, a time to refine our perspective, an opportunity to set our course for the next twelve months. Or… to do nothing and continue on whatever default path we’ve been following. Of course there’s nothing inherently special about January 1st. It’s not like the winter solstice, when the days cease becoming shorter and slowly start lengthening. And it’s not like that glorious day when the first spring blossom bursts forth with its promise of riotous color and exuberant birdsong to come. Despite that lack of inherent meaning, I like to take the turning of one calendar year…
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New Year’s Day of Reflection (Sketching as Prayer)
2023 is just beyond the turning of the calendar. A New Year full of hopes and potential and… unknowns. The turning of the calendar provides a context for looking back to reflect on the year we’re just closing out and looking forward as we give thought to our path for the coming year. We all have hopes and perhaps dreams for the next 12 months, but much is unknown to us and beyond our control. We can have the certainty of knowing we are in God’s loving care, and that all our days are known to him, but with health concerns, a challenging economy, and general societal turmoil it can…