Allan Boesak & Harm Visser

Harm Visser: Blood-red Beautiful Sky, 2019, acrylic on panel, 15 x 30 cm. 

&

Allan Boesak: Advent Credo, from Walking on Thorns by Allan Boesak, Eerdmans, 2004.

 

Advent Credo

It is not true that creation and the human family are doomed to destruction and loss—
This is true: For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life;

It is not true that we must accept inhumanity and discrimination, hunger and poverty, death and destruction—
This is true: I have come that they may have life, and that abundantly.

It is not true that violence and hatred should have the last word, and that war and destruction rule forever—
This is true: Unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, his name shall be called wonderful councilor, mighty God, the Everlasting, the Prince of peace.

It is not true that we are simply victims of the powers of evil who seek to rule the world—
This is true: To me is given authority in heaven and on earth, and lo I am with you, even until the end of the world.

It is not true that we have to wait for those who are specially gifted, who are the prophets of the Church before we can be peacemakers—
This is true: I will pour out my spirit on all flesh and your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your young men shall see visions and your old men shall have dreams.

It is not true that our hopes for liberation of humankind, of justice, of human dignity of peace are not meant for this earth and for this history—
This is true: The hour comes, and it is now, that the true worshipers shall worship God in spirit and in truth.

So let us enter Advent in hope, even hope against hope. Let us see visions of love and peace and justice. Let us affirm with humility, with joy, with faith, with courage: Jesus Christ—the life of the world.

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Allan Boesak (born 1946) is a South African Dutch Reformed Church cleric and politician and anti-apartheid activist. He was sentenced to prison for fraud in 1999 but was subsequently granted an official pardon and reinstated as a cleric in late 2004. Along with Beyers Naude and Winnie Mandela, Boesak won the 1985 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award given annually by the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights to an individual or group whose courageous activism is at the heart of the human rights movement.

Harm Visser (b. 1979) is a Dutch painter and sculptor who has been drawing since childhood. Already very early on he was fascinated by animals and nature in general. When he was thirteen years old he started taking courses in drawing and painting. From 1999 - 2001 he attended the Vrije Academie voor Beeldende Kunsten (Free Academy for Visual Arts) in Nunspeet, a village with a long history of painters. 'Wonder' is a key word with many meanings for Harm. “Nature is not only what I see around me. It is an endless world of experience in which we are allowed to ‘be’ and where we are touched by visible and invisible things.” For Harm the concept of ‘miracle’ is the foundation of all that exists. To give expression to the dimensions of colour and depth in a landscape, he speaks of ‘layers’. “There are diverse atmospheres that, in turn, generate our differing experiences of the landscape. We don’t look at a landscape, we look into it.” Harm has exhibited in various renowned galleries since his twentieth year. www.harmvisser.nl

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