“Listen to A Picture”

I love photography. I love it when I get an image just right. A great photo or a painting or even a film can evoke beauty, inspiration or life changing actions. Even sculptures can tell a story. My favorite sculpture (which I’ve written about here) is Michelangelo’s Moses. In Bible College, the professor explained that the strength of the figure and the intensity of Moses’ gaze were because he was looking into the Promised Land into which he was not allowed to go. Now that’s a powerful image.

I can think of two images in particular that had great power; one, a horrifying photo of a mother weeping over the bodies of five of her children after they perished in a Turkish earthquake back in the ’80’s. I can’t even post it because it is so heartbreaking, even more so now that I’ve had children. This photo moved me tremendously and to understand that grief is universal, that everyday there is loss, death and calamity

The second image is the complete opposite.

It was 2017 after the Super Bowl. Of course, Tom Brady not only was in it, but the Patriots went on to win it. For Tom’s mom, it was the first game of the season she attended because she had been battling cancer all season. I looked all over the internet for the image, but it has been removed. It was in the throes of champion joy that Tom looks at his mom with his million dollar smile with great love and her face is full of so much pride, joy and love. It’s a beautiful photo and powerful image of love, resilience and joy.

Images impact emotions faster and can be more powerful than words. Henri Nouwen, when he visited a friend in France in 1983, first saw Rembrandt’s Prodigal Son. His friend asked him, “Do you like it?”

I kept staring at the poster and finally stuttered, “It’s beautiful, more than beautiful…it makes me want to cry and laugh at the same time…I can’t tell you what I feel as I look at it, but it touches me deeply.”

Henri Nouwen was so moved by the painting that he eventually went to St. Petersburg to see the original himself.

Rembrandt’s embrace remained imprinted on my soul far more profoundly than any temporary expression of emotional support. It had brought me into touch with something within me that lies far beyond the ups and downs of a busy life , something that represents the ongoing yearning of the human spirit, the yearning for a final return, an unambiguous sense of safety, a lasting home.

Nouwen went on the write his famous, The Return of the Prodigal Son, because of his encounter with a powerful image. Speaking of the Prodigal Son, the title of this blog is taken from one of my favorite sermons of Thru the Bible’s J. Vernon McGee. It too is titled Listen to A Picture. You can listen to it here.

This blog is about a recent “image” I saw. It wasn’t a photo, painting or sculpture, but it was a live illustration in a sermon. The sermon series at my church is covering the Sermon on the Mount. Last Sunday’s sermon was about the Lord’s Prayer, the “Our Father” as we called it growing up in the Catholic Church.

As the pastor gave his sermon, he did something so simple, so sublime, so unassuming…yet very, very powerful. As he was talking about “Our Father Who is in heaven”, he called his young daughter to the stage and she happily jumped into his arms. He paused and let that image sink into our minds and said, “This is what our relationship with the Father looks like.” He held her firmly with his arm and she beamed as she looked into his face. And he beamed right back into hers. The illustration lasted a few minutes, she beamed the whole time. She was in her daddy’s arms, safe, secure and loved. WOW!

Now, I know that God is my Father, intellectually, and I know I’ve been adopted into the family of God by receiving Christ into my life through faith…but as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name. I know that…but to see this powerful image of a loving father and happy child…sometimes that is not a reality in my walk with the Lord. I am fearful. I doubt. I do not trust the strong Arm that holds me. And I am certainly not always smiling. I’ve got some serious adjustments to make.

What does this image, this sermon illustration want us to hear? It wants us to hear, to know that we are beloved children of the Father, we are all kinda His favorites. That we have been legitimately adopted into His family through Christ, (that’s how great the Gospel is). And that there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God…

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Even the prodigal son was still a son in the pigpen.

I think an obstacle to returning to the strong arms of our Heavenly Father is our misunderstanding or misconception of what a father is. Some of us have had difficult relationships with our own dads, and there are residual wounds. Some of us have never been held like the pastor’s daughter was, securely and lovingly. It is foreign, even uncomfortable.

But…this is not without remedy. God really can heal those wounds and replace bitter experiences with new hope. I think as we, like the prodigal son, make our way back to the Father from whatever pigpen we’ve been in – fearfulness, anxiety, unbelief as well as a host of other sins – we will begin to bask in more of that Father’s love that was illustrated by the pastor and his daughter, and we will “rejoice in the Lord always: and again I say, rejoice” as Paul wrote from a Philippian prison.