Scot McKnight is a widely respected, self-described anabaptist, New Testament scholar, and Professor in Religious Studies at North Park University in Chicago. He has written numerous books, including the award-winning volume, The Jesus Creed: Loving God, Loving Others. It's in this volume that McKnight offers compelling insight into the life and art of Vincent van Gogh, or as the painter might be referenced here in the Deep South, van Geaux:
Yellow is not my favorite color. But now that I know the story of Vincent van Gogh, I have come to value yellow differently. This famous Dutch painter, sadly, tossed away the truth imparted to him in his Christian home and sank into depression and destruction. By the grace of God, as he later began to embrace that truth again, his life took on hope, and he gave that hope color. The best-kept secret of van Gogh's life is that the truth he was discovering is seen in the gradual increase of the presence of the color yellow in his paintings. Yellow evoked (for him) the hope and warmth of the truth of God's love. In one of his depressive periods, seen in his famous The Starry Night, one finds a yellow sun and swirling yellow stars, because van Gogh thought truth was present only in nature. Tragically, the church, which stands tall in the painting and should be the house of truth, is about the only item in the painting showing no traces of yellow. But by the time he painted The Raising of Lazarus, his life was on the mend as he began to face the truth about himself. The entire picture is (blindingly) bathed in yellow. In fact, van Gogh put his own face on Lazarus to express his own hope in the Resurrection. Yellow tells the whole story: life can begin all over again because of the truth of God's love. Each of us, whether with actual yellows or metaphorical yellows, can begin to paint our lives with the fresh hope of a new beginning. (Scot McKnight, Jesus Creed: Loving God, Loving Others, pp. 64-65) What color represents hope for you--either actually or metaphorically? Where and how does it show up, or where and how would you like it to show up?
If not a color, is there a someone, a somewhere, or a something in your life, which--by its absence or its presence--reflects the measure of your mental and spiritual well-being?
What part of your world and its orbit is crying out for a new beginning?
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