Paschal Trilogy – 2024: Resurrection Sunday John 20:19-20, ‘He showed them His hands and His side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.’ What does the Risen Jesus show His disciples in this passage? His nail-torn hands and spear-pierced side…These wounds are the wells of our sin, the gashes of our grief, the […]
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Colossians 1:18b, ‘…He is the beginning, the Firstborn from the Dead.’ This is the fifth picture in the planned Colossians 1:15-20 board book. When Jesus walks out of the tomb, the New Creation has begun. But Jesus is not raised from the dead *into* the New Creation (as we are now in union to Him
Proverbs 25:11, ‘A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver.’ A classical understanding of ‘the Beautiful,’ recognized ‘Beauty’ as that which appears when diverse parts harmoniously agree with one another, revealing a new whole within the concert of their unity. The idea of ‘fitness’ in Proverbs 25:11 seems to
Job 19:25-26, ‘For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last He will stand upon the dust. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God.’ With these words, it is as though the the skeletal hand of Job’s faith, livened by the breath of the
John 11:21, ‘If you had been here…’ ‘If you had…’ — With these words, Martha’s imagination conjures a state of affairs that she believes would have been better than what has, in fact, happened…If Jesus had been here, Lazarus would not have died, she and her sister would have been spared the pain of loss,
Hebrews 12:2, ‘…looking to Jesus, the originator and perfector of faith.’ One of the surest ways to descend into a labyrinth of confusion, apprehension, and spiritual weakness is to make our own faith the object of our scrutiny. ‘Am I really trusting?’ ‘Is my faith sincere?’ ‘Is my faith strong enough?’ etc. Questions like those
Hebrews 11:19, ‘…[Abraham] considered that God was able to raise [Isaac] from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.’ See the place that resurrection plays in Abraham’s faith. In this passage, resurrection is the unexpected—yet necessary—conclusion that arises from the equation of God’s Promises + Death. The Genesis 22 command
Luke 24:50, ‘And, lifting up His hands, He blessed them.’ These are the same hands that Jesus displayed to His disciples in v.39, the hands bearing the wounds of His crucifixion, which is to say, wounds that bear witness to the disciples’ sin and the condemnation due that sin. More than this, in those
The Paschal Trilogy – Part III/III – Resurrection Sunday Luke 24:30-31, ‘When He was at table with them, He took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened, and they recognized Him.’ The disciples did not recognize the Risen Lord until He *broke* the bread and
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Psalm 46:4-7, ‘There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High. God is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved; God will help her when morning dawns. The nations rage, the kingdoms totter; He utters His voice, the earth melts. YHWH of
Isaiah 60:20, ‘Your sun shall no more go down, nor your moon withdraw itself; for YHWH will be your everlasting light, and your days of mourning shall be ended.’ (also v.4) Today is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day, and I was asked by my Sister-in-Law to create an image based on Isaiah 60:20 that
2 Corinthians 12:9, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for [my] power is made perfect in weakness.’ The weakness that Paul speaks of here—weakness in which the anastasiform (resurrection-shaped) power of Christ is brought to completion—are the very same weaknesses that Christ bore in Himself on the cross (Is. 53:3-4). That is to say, they
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Psalm 42:11, “Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him, my salvation and my God.” How do we know that ‘we shall again praise Him’? How do we know that this darkness is going to lift? That we will rise again from this pit? That the hopelessness that has devoured days, months, years of
Psalm 27 Rather than a specific verse, this image attempts to visually exegete some of the central movements of the 27th Psalm. So, perhaps the best way to explain it is to walk through the elements of the image in the order that they appear in the Psalm. David begins by confessing that YHWH
Ps 89:9-10, ‘You rule the raging of the sea; when its waves rise, you still them. You crushed Rahab like a carcass…’ Here we find a poetic description of YHWH’s creation of the world, which may also be understood as a poetic recounting of the Exodus. How do we know this? First of all, the
John 16:21-22, ‘When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer removers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world. So also, you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your
Ps 37:23-24, ‘The steps of a man are established by YHWH, when he delights in His way; though he fall, he shall not be cast headlong, for YHWH upholds his hand.’ Here we see an interesting dynamic of the Christian life: The saint is one who both will most certainly fall and who will never
Lam. 2:15-16, ‘All who pass along the way clap their hands at you; they hiss and wag their heads at the daughter of Jerusalem: ‘Is this the city that was called the perfection of beauty, the joy of all the earth?’ All your enemies rail against you; they hiss, they gnash their teeth…’ Jerusalem
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John 6:68, ‘Lord, to whom will we go? You have the words of eternal life.’ When the torrents of confusion and uncertainty and doubt hammer against the disciples’ faith, what is it that binds them to Christ? It is not an elaborate system of apologetic arguments, it is not a collection of manuscript evidence, it
