Midweek Devotion 23 April 2025

Reading

Isaiah 65:17

I am about to create new heavens

and a new earth;

the former things shall not be remembered

or come to mind.

Devotion

Wayne Pascal, a contemporary African-American artist from Georgia, created this acrylic painting of the resurrection.  I like the use of light.  It is as if Jesus is moving into the light as he crosses the threshold.  The tomb's entrance appears as the gate to everlasting life.  The light illuminates the burial shroud which is left empty, with a bit of a wispy quality, perhaps showing us something of the nature of temporal existence?  

Author Randy Alcorn draws this bit of wisdom from C. S. Lewis' The Great Divorce that came to mind as I beheld this painting:

"In The Great Divorce, Lewis sees everything in heaven (grass, rocks, trees, water, etc.) as “much solider than things in our country.” It’s all heavy and hard, like diamonds—the character can’t pluck a flower or pick up a leaf. Grass is sharp and hard. All this is in contrast to the people coming from earth who are transparent and ghostly. They have thought of their world as the “real” one, the one with substance, while thinking of heaven as the less substantial spirit world. They learn, or those with eyes to see learn, that they had it backwards. Heaven is the land of substance, earth the land of shadow. Earth is full of not only shadows, but illusions and pretentions, Heaven is reality itself. To fit into Heaven they must become not less solid, but more, they must move from being phantoms to having weight and substance. They are shallow people who must become deeper, and with that weightier. If they are not changed, Heaven will have no appeal to them. They cannot live there, and neither will they want to."

May this Easter season help you to become really real, dear reader!

Prayer

Almighty God, who through your only-begotten Son Jesus Christ overcame death and opened to us the gate of everlasting life: Grant that we, who celebrate with joy the day of the Lord's resurrection, may be raised from the death of sin by your life-giving Spirit; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (Book of Common Prayer)