outWORD by Matte Downey

A group of us have been working through the fascinating book of Revelation. It has been enlightening in so many ways. I liken it to walking through an art gallery filled with images which, at first glance, seem bizarre and unrelated, but after spending some dedicated time with the works of art and taking in a guided tour with an art historian, you start to see how the pictures fit together and play off each other. In the visions and images of Revelation, Christ and the world are revealed in both new and yet familiar ways. Revelation is divided into three sections: God speaks to the churches in the city (chapters 1-3), God judges the Great City (chapters 4-18), and God redeems the Holy City (chapters 19-22). [1] Each of these sections begins with a vision of Christ, a reminder to the hearer/readers that whatever strange and horrible visions may follow, the One who is, who was, and who is to come, the Lamb who was slain, remains on the throne, at the centre of it all. Reve...

Image from bestcoloringpagesforkids.com Words which we use a lot can sometimes become divested of their depth of meaning. In the Christian tradition, we talk about the cross a lot. We see visual representations of the cross in prominent places in our gathering spaces, we wear crosses around our necks, some get crosses tattooed on their bodies. The cross is a ubiquitous symbol in Christianity, so lately I have been asking myself, what exactly does the cross mean? For the most part, the cross as portrayed in contemporary Christianity is a beautiful thing, festooned with flowers and sunsets and radiant beams of light (just google  cross  or  cross coloring page ). But in the first century, the cross was a symbol of disgrace. To the Roman empire, this ignoble instrument of death was for those who were traitors and enemies of the state. We are many centuries removed from this view of the cross as the locus of torture and death and shame. The fact that Christianity h...

Adoration of the Shepherds by Nicolaes Maes. Image from pubhist.com Last week I spent a morning at the Museum of Fine Arts. They have recently built a new pavilion and to celebrate its opening, they offered free admission for the first few months, encouraging visitors to check it out. So on a cold, windy January Friday, I did. The space itself is beautiful, all wood and glass in the lobbies with plenty of places to sit and look over the city. There are four floors or galleries, each covering a different era and style. and I took a few hours to wander through all of them. To be honest, it was overwhelming. Nearly 5,000 square metres and 750 artistic works. Every three to six feet, one is presented with a masterpiece which has taken months, if not years, to create. It is just too much to take in. I ended up scanning each wall and only spending time with those pieces which caught my attention. My favourite section was the fourth level which housed a lot of religious art, from models...