Diane Bridges painted this scene on a rock for a Christmas gift. She is quite good at doing this work, and when I saw it I thought of two things. First, this work fits into the posts that I put up on this blog about the beauty that is within us and around us and that is not in the first place about making money. It's not just the painting here that speaks to me, but that Ms. Bridges did this on a rock and did it as a gift. She enjoyed doing it. She built bridges with this.
The second thought that occurred to me when I first saw this is the many places in the Hebrew and Christian Bibles where there are passages talking about rocks and stones. The theologian Richard Rohrs says in one of his books that it's difficult for us to begin our faith journeys by loving God and that it is a good idea for most of us to start with loving something small and immediate first, and he suggests rocks and building our love from there. We refer to God as our Rock. Psalm 18:46 says "The LORD lives! Praise be to my Rock! Exalted be God my Savior!" In Luke 19:28-40 Jesus speaks of stones crying out and testifying. He was not using a passing or common expression when he said this. This beautiful adornment of a rock as a gift carries with it a real theology. In raising up something simple and ordinary in the way that Ms. Bridges has we are reminded of the beauty and testimony of creation, where love begins, and the gifts that we have been given.
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