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Art Reflection for Advent: Week 3 (Crap-freaky angels and migraines)

(if you’re new–I had created a series of digital art for my church’s Advent series. I figured I’d repurpose them here as I love art so much. You can find Week 1 and Week 2 here 🙂

My junior or senior year in high school I was running late to school thanks to another migraine. I dragged my drugged-up rear into the car and focused through the remaining pain. I feared going to school after migraines because it always meant nausea and pain, and it always meant I took the risk of an accident during the 45 min drive each way with my drugged-up vision and took the risk of being stuck with a second or third migraine either on the road or at school.

I tucked that slightly freaked-out part of me inside and pulled out of the driveway. I reached the crest of the hill my family lived on when I slammed on the brakes, right in the middle of the street.

And gaped.

In the sky was the most stunning sunrise I’d ever seen. Dramatic orange and gold egg-carton clouds billowed over foothills and mountains, a silhouetted house rose in the distance.

This is the one benefit of pollution–breathtaking colors.

I’ve never seen another sunset or sunrise like it, and I’ve never been able to capture it in paint, even if I use straight cad orange.

Go_Tell_it_Mountain_Week2
The shepherds feared and trembled When lo! above the earth Rang out the angel chorus That hailed our Saviour’s birth: Go, Tell It On The Mountain, Over the hills and everywhere; Go, Tell It On The Mountain That Jesus Christ is born.

While I would officially never never EVER recommend driving to school on a migraine OR driving while on migraine meds in general, I will say that if I hadn’t ignored my fear I would never have seen that sunrise. I still treasure the memory of it today.

What caught my attention in this stanza as I sat to write this was how scared the shepherds must have felt. Angels are freaky things. They aren’t the cute naked-butt smiling babies so often painted throughout history. They scare people until the recipients of their amaze-balls-ness fall over in stunned terror.

And yet something so crap-freaky is supposed to be the bringer of goodness and hope.

I doubt those shepherds were buying it.

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Art Reflection for Advent: Week 2

(Sorry this post is a day late!)

As I mentioned last week, my church is going through the hymn Go Tell it On the Mountain. I wanted to share the digital art I created for the series and a short reflection:
Go_Tell_it_Mountain_Week1Yesterday, I watched two of my siblings perform in their high school Christmas program. It wasn’t your traditional Mary-shepherds-creepy wise men performance. Using a mixed media of video, dance, and music, they told the story of a WWI Christmas. Exactly 100 years ago–1914.

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Art Reflection for Advent: Week 4

where they need no star to guideWelcome to the last Advent art post! The fourth stanza of “As With Gladness, Men of Old” goes like this:

Holy Jesus, every day
Keep us in the narrow way;
And, when earthly things are past,
Bring our ransomed souls at last
Where they need no star to guide,
Where no clouds Thy glory hide.

This verse made me wonder: If Jesus will be so bright a star is no longer needed, then how bright does He have to be? Of course, this automatically means research (go with it, I’m nerdy).

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Art Reflection for Advent: Week 3

All our costliest treasure bringThis art series is designed to let you pause during this busy holiday season. Each week during Advent, we’ve been focusing on one stanza from the hymn “As with Gladness, Men of Old.”

The entire third stanza of goes like this:

As they offered gifts most rare
At that manger rude and bare;
So may we with holy joy,
Pure and free from sin’s alloy,
All our costliest treasures bring,
Christ, to Thee, our heavenly King.

Whenever treasure and Christmas or Advent are associated, my mind jumps to the wise men’s gifts or elementary students monologing as The Little Drummer Boy (claymation, anyone?).

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