This is another quick painting from an evening of worship art. I call it “Brooding.”

Sometimes we are not privy to what God is doing. Sometimes the seed deep in the earth, or the new life in the egg stirs when we are unaware of its existance.  One translation of the creation story talks about the Spirit of God brooding over the chaos that He was to  transform by His Word.

It can feel like a very long time between the darkness of the Day of Crucifixion until the light of the Day of Resurrection. This is the time of perseverance. This is the time of clinging by faith to the promises of God.

This is the time when we strain our ears in the silence for the sound of the Spirit taking a breath before he begins to blow  life into that which appears dormant.

The hours, days, years, decades between promise and fulfillment is the time, when in agony of disappointment in our own sense of timing, and stretched beyond what we ever thought we could endure, that we choose to walk by faith and not by sight.

This is the hour we stand, and stand some more and, when we have weakened, rise to stand again and sing, “I trust in Your faithful Love.”

How long, O Eternal One?

How long will You forget me? Forever?
How long will You look the other way?
How long must I agonize,
grieving Your absence in my heart every day?
How long will You let my enemies win

Turn back; respond to me, O Eternal, my True God!
Put the spark of life in my eyes, or I’m dead.
My enemies will boast they have beaten me;
my foes will celebrate that I have stumbled.

But I trust in Your faithful love;
my heart leaps at the thought of imminent deliverance by You.
I will sing to the Eternal,
for He is always generous with me.

(Psalm 13 The Voice)