Saturday, April 1, 2023
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Silence before the storm
I will take the children of Israel and gather them from all sides to bring them back to their land. I will make them one nation. Never again shall there be two nations, never again shall my children be divided. They shall live on the land where their fathers lived; they shall live on it forever, they, and their children, and their children’s children.
I’m gazing in admiration and joy at the hundreds of artworks gathered by Dee Day at Hill Country Bible Church’s Artpact for spring, 2023. We’re eating giant gluten free chocolate chip cookies with good black coffee, walking around the paintings and sculptures and mosaics and stained glass.
I looked out the shoulder height picture windows that graced the gallery at a high white thundercloud, sitting in the sun. Tornadoes tore through Little Rock today, and later north of Rantoul, Illinois, and a baseball game was postponed for hours in Houston. Deep puddles filled the gap between our apartment driveway and Jollyville Road. But I must have been sleeping. When did that storm come?
The big cloud was etched into the bright blue sky.
Am I catching the sound of thunder as I sit here in the evening, writing? Or are our upstairs neighbors dragging some furniture across the floor? Ryan and Jacob just moved in; it’s taking them awhile to decide on where things go.
They shall live on the land where their fathers lived; they shall live on it forever, they, and their children, and their children’s children.
On March 29, 1944 Anne Frank began revising her two year old diary with a view to publication. She had heard her Dutch education minister say over the radio, “If our descendants are to understand fully what we as a nation have had to endure, then what we really need are ordinary documents.”
Indeed, the Jewish people were scattered all over the world during the millennia since Ezekiel spoke God’s promise, his prophecy of gathering once and for all, forever. In 1948 the nation of Israel was reborn. For the last seventy-five years, its history has been tumultuous, to say the least. But the Israelis know the prophecies, and they intend to live them out.
My dwelling shall be with them; I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Then the nations will know that it is I, the Lord, who make Israel holy, when my sanctuary shall be set up among them forever.
For me the most striking object of art at tonight’s ArtPact was the simulated, stained glass death mask of a young man. Could it have been Jesus? Of course it could have. I thought of Anne Frank’s soft, gentle face, depicted on her book above the line, “Introduction by Eleanor Roosevelt.” Who has not heard of, and read at least parts of The Diary of a Young Girl? Still, in the weeks before her family was rousted out by Nazi storm troopers she wrote:
Everything here is so mixed up, nothing’s connected any more, and sometimes I very much doubt whether anyone in the future will be interested in all my tosh. “The unbosomings of an ugly duckling” will be the title of all this nonsense.
Our evening ended with Tom Jeannett’s jazz quartet playing a melancholy “Amazing Grace.” Tom’s baritone sax, muted and pure, broke my heart. Anne’s last words … the death mask of Jesus … brought into a gentle focus all that is about to take place in history, in our minds, in our softened hearts this next week … this Holy Week.
(Ezekiel 37, Jeremiah 31, Ezekiel 18, John 11)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
#
