Still Life?
Still Life?
As an artist, I’ve always been challenged by still life. Contrary to what you might think, still life has to be more than a collection of objects occupying space on a table. Those images must compel the viewer to become involved. They must unlock memories, evoke mental images. While the painting itself doesn’t move, it must move something within one who views.
No, a bowl of fruit doesn’t jump around, but it does have life. The challenge is to make a banana look like it’s begging to be peeled. Dying to get eaten.
When I paint a bell, I want that bell to do what it was made to do. A painted bell that doesn’t ring in the viewer’s mind is a dead thing. Something less than a bell.
If I paint a candle I want the viewer to smell the fragrance of melting wax and feel the heat of the flame.
Fruit. Bells. Candles. These must be more than lifeless ornaments. They must perform their appointed tasks in the imagination of the one who stands before the painting. Why? Because that is what we expect of their real-life counterparts. A piece of fruit that sits undisturbed and uneaten in a bowl will soon rot—unless it’s made of wax. An ornamental candle that languishes for years in a brass holder never fulfills its destiny. A voiceless bell that collects dust on somebody’s knickknack shelf is a mockery to its creator.
As I consider these thoughts, it comes to me that some of us Christians have become “still life.” We give every appearance of pious, church-going, Bible-believing disciples of Jesus. But we’re still life—and we know it. A one-dimensional painting. An ornament on display. A knickknack on the shelf. Nice to look at and be looked up to … but rarely put to good use. Down in our hearts, we know we’re gathering dust, letting the years slip by, not really doing and being what God intended us to do and be.
The book of James offers succinct counsel for ornamental Christians. “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves,” the apostle writes. “Do what it says” (James 1:22).
Just as bells are meant to ring, you and I are meant to sound out the good news of Jesus.
Just as candles are meant to burn, you and I are meant to stir the fires of the Spirit within us.
Just as fruit is meant to nourish and refresh, you and I are meant to bear the fragrant, life-giving fruit of the Spirit of Christ for the sake of hungry, discouraged men and women.
Life, you see, is never really still.
Only death is still.