We walked up the busy street towards Trafalgar square, where lions roared and Nelson leaned on his heavy stick. Passed the awe – inspired tourists and lunch eating locals, I grabbed my hubby’s hand and pushed through the heavy doors in to the Gallery of London. I had been there before but the art wing I had yearned to see, had been closed, so I was left to wait a further two years before I could finally enter the Impressionist Wing. Excitement was surely written on my face. Eventually I dropped hubby’s hand and made a dash, rounding the corner I stopped abruptly. There it was, the painting whose replica hung in my dining room, sad at the fact that it was only a reproduction. Yet as I neared the painting something happened. I was struck with a feeling I doubted I had felt before. There it was in front of me, The Umbrella’s by Renoir, and a tear fell from my eye.
That’s the feeling beautiful art gives us. That’s the emotion beautiful music evokes in us. That’s the scene you encounter when you watch someone like Andre Rieu lead an orchestra through an opera. Having spent the last two years learning how to paint, I appreciate the fact that someone took brushes and colours and created a masterpiece on a canvas that makes you wonder at its charm and beauty, its light and shade. It’s a master worker who loves what he or she does, that can evoke emotion in its audience. Yet, as much as we muse at these works of art, I am surprised at our own inability to muse at the wonderful work of art we are part of everyday. The work of art called us.
Recently, I came to learn about the “rainbow birds” rightly called Rainbow Lorikeet’s. They are unmistakably recognisable by their beautiful colours and unique song which they sing. Their colours leave one truly touched. Which brings me to the colours of the Egyptian slavery in this weeks Torah portion. Exodus begins by relating the move of Jacob and his family to Egypt, a move that saved them from death. Eventually though, a new pharaoh rose up and begun to enslave the growing, thriving Israelite population (Exodus 1:8 – 10) the purpose of the slavery, was to break their spirits and it worked. Everything the Egyptians did was with crushing hardness (verse 13), and the horrors they invoked on the Israelites grew from bad to worse. Devastated and broken, the Israelites decided to return to their God, the only One who had ever been there for them and when they cried out to Him, He heard them. The slavery Yahweh had told Abraham would happen, was at its end. The time of redemption was near.
Exodus 3:9 – 10 (NIV)
“And now, behold, the cry of the people of Israel has come to me, and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them. Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.”
On one level, God saw the crushing hardness, He saw the devastating weight of slavery but He also saw something else. He saw what I first saw, when I stood in the London Gallery. He saw the beautiful artworks; His people could become. He saw their colours, He heard their song of brokenness. Slave songs were common among certain groups of people and those songs expressed the tears they wished to shed, they also inspired the soul to hope.
The Israelites were a people chosen by God, not because of their size or beauty but because of His Grace. He saw them and was moved at who He wanted them to be. He was moved by the stirring brokenness of their hearts, by the depth of their slavery, by the chains that bound them hand and heart.
Each one of us are born in to this world with a stamp on, with a Painters Mark on and eventually we will all have to choose what to do with that mark. Yahweh was moved by His Love and compassion to save His people from slavery and never before had a nation been so miraculously delivered and so gently wooed by a Loving Groom. Their slavery in Exodus, depicts our own. While still born with that mark on us, we chose to go astray and then He came in, desperate to save us and delivered us from our chains. We can rejoice at our deliverance, beneath His Wave of Love, but there is more.
Romans 8: 15 – 17 (NIV)
For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself b
ears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.
For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself b
ears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.
Ephesians 2:10 (TPT)
“We have become His poetry, a recreated people that will fulfil the destiny He has given
each of us, for we are joined to Jesus, the Anointed One.
Even before we were born, God planned in advance our destiny, and the good works we would do to fulfil it!”
“We have become His poetry, a recreated people that will fulfil the destiny He has given
each of us, for we are joined to Jesus, the Anointed One.
Even before we were born, God planned in advance our destiny, and the good works we would do to fulfil it!”
The Israelites were a nation chosen from slavery, bound for the promised land, yet most of them died along the way because they would not take the spiritual journey to become children. To become the masterpiece that Papa intended them to become. Along with becoming the masterpiece of living faith, is the living works that is ordained just for you to fulfil. Just for you. Papa saw you there, singing your slave song bound in shackles and chains, ploughing hard ground, sinking in to the mud while you build an empire for another man. And He reached down through all that mud, Shed Blood that slid the chain from your leg and He saved you, so that He could Love you and recreate you. But child, you have a greater calling, a sweeter destiny. It’s not one of slavery to any man, or system, it’s the destiny to become a child, one who walks in obedience and resembles his or her Father.
Michelangelo was once chipping away at a big piece of unhewn stone, when someone walked by and asked him what he was doing. He turned and replied; “I am liberating an angel from this stone.” That’s what Papa does, liberates someone special from an iron furnace, because of His great Love. As God’s poem and piece of art, He has the right to place the words on the stanza’s where He wants them to be. He has the right to mix more red with the blue, to get a different hue but in it all He is creating a Masterpiece, what is required from you, is surrender.
This Shabbat may you know just how much Yeshua gave to redeem you, and may you start to see that you are a masterpiece, a work of art in progress, don’t stop going!
Shabbat Shalom!
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