Painting: A Song for the Sabbath Day

Psalm 92 begins by telling us what is good: to sing praise to the Lord. This carries a warm familiar breeze of Eden, when God sang creation into being and promptly declared every new thing He created as good. I don’t think Adam and Eve needed to be reminded to sing. I imagine their song of delight in their Creator flowed as naturally as their newly given lungs inhaled and exhaled breath. But when sin expelled us from the Garden, we lost our song. In the second verse we see that by calling us to use the Sun’s rising and setting as cues to sing our song, God is providing breadcrumbs to guide us back to our beginning in Him.

Reading this, I began to imagine the Sun as a music conductor of sorts, warmly beckoning to us every morning to rise and sing with the birds; and stretching his golden rays out like arms in the evening to start the symphony all over again. I recalled what Revelation 21:23 said: “And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb.” I realized that one day the Sun’s role as our “music conductor” will end. I thought of all of the gorgeous sunrises and sunsets I have seen in my life and how their beauty calls my heart to sing. But I realized that the Sun waits in “eager expectation” (Romans 8:19) for this cycle to come to an end.

I began this oil painting with excitement to share the sense of wonder of the very moment that the bright presence of Jesus replaces the sun. The painting conveys this moment from the sun’s perspective, as you see it about to fade from view in the bottom left. The sun “takes a final bow”, as it were, settling his last glorious sunset and in humility, with the rest of creation, looking on towards the horizon. The painting as a whole is heavily circular, with strands of light, clouds, and stars painted in a swirling momentum, to express all of creation as a song, being beckoned with the sun’s last rays to stream towards the New. This is the moment for which all of creation has eagerly longed for: the original Song that created the world is finally about to come back together. There are cedars, representing those planted “in the house of the Lord” in verse 12, clothed with joy and waiting for the new Light.

Six Prints: Variable Edition Monotypes

While I was working on my painting, I was also exploring an idea of combining block printing and monotype to create a series of prints because the tension between something consistent with something highly unpredictable interested me. A monotype is a unique type of printing in which ink or paint is applied onto a plexiglass or metal plate. The paper is then pressed over it and a single impression is made. Because they are unique, single impressions, they are each labeled a “Variable Edition 1/1”. Each one represents a single day, of which we often have little control over. I then hand carved two linoleum blocks that represent both a sunrise and sunset, or the cycle of the sun each day and the song we are to sing. I overlaid these onto each of the monotypes using a gold oil based printmaking ink. The sun rays offer the consistent element that holds the prints together as a series. This creative journey was hard at times, and I wrestled with feelings of inadequacy and doubt. I practiced the discipline of going to my studio each day, even when I didn’t feel like it. This experience became an embodiment of the lesson that the psalm was teaching me!

I hope that my prints, being a collection of six, coupled with my painting, enhance the viewer’s understanding of Psalm 92 being called “A Song for the Sabbath Day”. While the prints each tell the story of a single day, the painting is a glimpse into the final Sabbath Day, and the moment we have spent each of our days rehearsing our broken melodies for: to see Jesus Himself, our long lost Song, return.