Well hello there to you and a new year!

Because I was quite absent here on the blog in the blur of work and school activities, I wanted to do a recap of the end of last year.

Just in time for the big Omicron surge, my whole family was able to get vaccinated (and I boosted), for which we are very grateful.

We started reading through the Narnia books with the kids.

I had the opportunity to display my artwork at the local shop where I work a few days each week now. It included Christmas hymns, watercolor hymns, and a few landscapes and abstracts.

I made an ABCs of Harrisonburg print for my little town.

I got to design the program for my daughter’s school production of The Wizard of Oz.

In the midst of all this, we walked away from our church of 14 years. It had become clear that it wasn’t spiritually or emotionally healthy for us to stay. I don’t have many words at this point, just a deep loss.

I am guessing that we are not alone in this experience. I listened to a podcast interview on the Holy Post with David Kinnaman on the mass disruption and upheaval happening in the American church during Covid (based on research from Barna).

One big theme for me the end of this year has been the sobering reality that we can so easily remake Jesus in our own image. Conservative or progressive, big or small churches, well-intentioned or not–we all do it.

I obsessively listened to the podcast series, The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, about Mark Driscoll’s church in Seattle. It portrayed so clearly how Driscoll reshaped Jesus and the church into his own image, tilting its values to a tough version of masculinity and harshness. The most heartbreaking thing was the number of people who left church or the faith altogether as a result.

When we represent Christ to people, what beauty we plant or what destruction we wield. Healing can be in our hands just as readily as rending. It frightens me, and I know I’ve failed so many times.

As I look to the year ahead, I have again picked up NT Wright’s The New Testament in Its World.* It’s a hefty examination of the history, literature, and theology that makes up the New Testament. Wright explains the importance of understanding Jesus in His historical context: “Without historical enquiry there is no check on Christianity’s propensity to remake Jesus, never mind the Christian ‘God’, in its own image.”

I am longing to know the real Jesus. This is part of why I wanted to do the Jesus Speaks to Women series. It is also why I am enjoying the First Nations Version: An Indigenous Translation of the New Testament.* Sometimes just a slightly different lens on Jesus reveals him in a different light.

Maybe all this searching requires the deepest humility and the knowledge that I can only know in part, like this verse says:

“Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.”

1 Corinthians 13:12, NLT

I recently attempted some portraits of my children. They’re not perfect, but the very process of studying them, the line of their lips, the curve of their cheeks, the subtle roundness of their eyes, was of value in itself. I’ll hang the portraits and continue to step back and see areas where I’ve got them wrong. Eyes slightly off-center, proportions done sloppily, coloring not quite right.

I won’t give up on the endeavor. I’ll continue to paint them and learn them better, just as I’ll do with Jesus again this year.

Thanks for being here with me.

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