Art and the Church -> Materials for Use in Churches

Proverbs 5 - White Shirt by Edward Knippers

Edward Knippers: White Shirt

The Wife of your Youth

Drink water from your own cistern,

flowing water from your own well.

Should your springs be scattered abroad,

streams of water in the streets?

Let them be for yourself alone,

and not for strangers with you.

Let your fountain be blessed,

and rejoice in the wife of your youth,

a lovely deer, a graceful doe.

Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight;

be intoxicated always in her love.

Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman

and embrace the bosom of an adulteress?

For a man’s ways are before the eyes of the Lord,

and he ponders all his paths.

The iniquities of the wicked ensnare him,

and he is held fast in the cords of his sin.

He dies for lack of discipline,

and because of his great folly he is led astray.

Proverbs 5:15–23 (ESV)

In The Gospel and Sex, Tim Keller (American theologian and founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City) writes, ‘The Bible is full of covenant renewal ceremonies… The ultimate covenant renewal ceremony is the Lord’s Supper. The sacrament of the Lord’s supper renews the covenant made at baptism; through the breaking of the bread and the pouring out of wine it reenacts the selfless sacrifice of Jesus to us… In the same way, marriage is a covenant, one that creates a place of security for vulnerability. But though covenant is necessary for sex, sex is also necessary for covenant. The covenant will grow stale unless we continually revisit and reenact it. Sex is a covenant renewal ceremony for marriage, the physical reenactment of the inseparable oneness in all other areas – economic, legal, personal, psychological – created by the marriage covenant. Sex renews and revitalizes the marriage covenant.’

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This meditation is taken over from Ned Bustard (ed.), Revealed: A Storybook Bible for Grownups, Square Halo Books, 2015.

Edward Knippers: White Shirt, 1994, monotype using oil based black ink on paper, 12" x 9" on Rives Heavyweight paper, size 19" x 13".

Edward Knippers holds an MFA from the University of Tennessee, has been a fellow at S. W. Hayter's Atelier 17 in Paris, France, worked with Zao Wou-ki in painting and with Otto Eglau in printmaking at the International Summer Academy of the Fine Arts in Salzburg, Austria and has studied the figure at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, USA and the Grande Chaumiere, Paris, France. He has had well over 150 awards and exhibitions in the USA.  Over half of his exhibitions have been one-man shows. His work has also been exhibited in Italy, England, Canada and Greece. For more, see http://edwardknippers.com.

ArtWay Visual Meditation June 18, 2017