The Beginnings - UnGraven Image Website

Last week was exciting and busy with the beginnings of our promotional reach. These new tasks included meeting advertising deadlines, creating ads, a new mailing list and so on. are first wo ads are on the Internet at Informart and Christianity Today's classifieds This coming week I layout the first color print ad for UnGraven Image, which is challenging so I expect I will pray my way through it!

Plus, this week Rebecca created the super opening page (those marching footprints) for the web site. We were busy working on that until after 2 AM! For a while those paintings/feet were doing a very funny dance! Sometimes Rebecca and I are perfectly in tune about what we are creating for the web site. We both acknowledge it is because we are "listening" and to the urgings of our Boss. That feels so wonderful, but it is a bit of a let down to move back into the "real" world where I am not so in tune.

So, I've been thinking and praying about the power of prayer a lot recently.

Prayer is actually defined as communication with the eternal or a higher power, and for the believer that means with the Lord. Prayer is both my communication with the Lord and the Lord's communication with me. There's also the communication the Lord has with me, through that "still small voice," through the physical reality surrounding me, through other people ("in the council of many is wisdom") and also through the Bible (and you can choose what version and texts you prefer). I paint both the prayers that go out as well as sometimes the prayer (communication) coming in to us, using the symbol of the "gold frame", which is almost always a psalm. For me prayer with the Lord reaches to the very edges, and maybe beyond the reality I recognize and experience. Hence, the concept of the frame within the larger image of the painting.

Recently, I've been concentrating on my prayer journey and experience. If you're following the same weekly texts that Jesus did, then you'll know this week we're dealing with Noah. Now Noah was righteous in his time but that compares him only to the folks who were so bad that they were destroyed by the flood! I think I would have been really righteous back then -- but now, in comparison to so many -- well, here and now, I am groping and stumbling along. Noah heard the Lord, and was obedient but he did not pray for the people around him to be saved! He did not argue with the Lord on behalf of his neighbors, he just spent 120 years obediently building his ark to save himself and the animals and his kin. Contrast Noah to Abraham, who was actually accounted as righteous, is the father of Judaism and then all Christianity and the Muslim faith. Abraham argued with the Lord on behalf of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Now, I for one am grateful Noah built that ark, and we all should be because according to Genesis, we are all his decendants! This belief in a flood and someone with a name that sounds or translates to Noah is found in most cultures around the world. It's amazing.

However, when it comes to asking for his neighbors, apparently Noah did not talk to the Lord.

I need to talk to the Lord more about my neighbors -- including neighbors in lands I have no grasp about nor care to visit soon. Rebecca and I have been having some good response to our prayers when we pray together (we are a Christian and a Jew united in spirit and love), but there is so much to pray for with just our own families! We do pray beyond that and that is where our results have been best, though. As I can afford the staff (or there are volunteers or other ministries) I would like to encourage prayer groups, maybe even over this miracle of the Internet, of Christians and Jews praying for mutual concerns as well as larger concerns that face the world, including poverty, disease, the environment, weather, etc.

Communication involves so much. I communicate through my paintings. Others communicate through music or dance. Still others "put there money where their mouth is" and giving to those in need is a powerful form of prayer.

I feel very close to the Lord when I am painting. In tune. In step. Of course, since I am using the Lord's words, -- the letters -- for every stroke, there has got to be more harmony that my usual ramblings.

I've been reading a book about Billy Graham's leadership and he prays a whole lot, setting a great example for me by letting the Lord into his life and concerns frequently during his day. I try to do that, but I need to do more.

Enoch walked perfectly with the Lord. Being in perfect step -- well, that would be perfect harmony, perfect communication - wouldn't it?

There's a lot to think about and pray about. May you have a week in which you are a blessing and blessed - JR

November 6, 2005