December 30: God Freely Gives Us All Things
♫ Music:
Monday, December 30
Title: GOD FREELY GIVES US ALL THINGS
Scripture: Romans 8: 31-39
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies; who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Just as it is written, “For Your sake we are being put to death all day long; we were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Poetry:
Photosynthesis
by AR Ammons
The sun’s wind
blows the fire
green, sails the
chloroplasts,
lifts banks, bogs,
boughs into flame:
the green ash of
yellow loss.
DO NOT FEAR
I remember a conversation with my Dad when I was a teenager: we were sitting on the front porch and he told me there was nothing I could do or not do that would prevent him from loving me. I always wanted my Dad to be proud of me and wanted to do everything “right.” My Dad was explaining that he loved me because I was his daughter--not for what I can do or achieve.
More perfect than the love of our earthly fathers is the love Christ has for us. In today’s passage, Paul writes: “Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or are hungry or cold or threatened with death? No, nothing will ever separate us from Christ’s love.” (Romans 8:35, 38) In her song, Do Not Fear, Audrey Assad quotes from Isaiah 43: When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; And the depths of the river, shall not overwhelm; When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; I am the Lord, I am the Lord. Christ does not promise we will not walk through sorrow, but He says to us, “My daughter, do not fear.” “My son, I am the Lord.”
The Paradise Camp Fire Murals by Shane Grammar are painted on the remains of homes and churches devastated by the Paradise Fire. The Paradise Fire of 2018 was one of the most devastating fires in California history; so many homes lost, an entire city brought to almost nothing. I cannot even imagine what it would have been like to be intimately affected by it. Earlier in Romans 8, Paul writes that “all creation anticipates the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay, and that we, as Christ followers, who have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, also groan to be released from pain and suffering. We wait and anticipate that day when God will give us our full rights as his children, including the new bodies he promises us” (Romans 8:21-23). Grammar’s portraits speak to this hope. His painting of Jesus is rendered on the remains of a church baptismal; a young girl’s face looks upward as if looking out a window; and the depiction of a woman who died in the fire stands as a memorial on what used to be her daughter’s home. The murals call us to remember that which was lost and invite us to anticipate the newness that is possible.
A.R. Hammons in his poem, Photosynthesis, images how the energy of the Sun that blows fires also feeds chloroplasts. Energy from the sun makes sugars and oxygen, which the earth needs in order to exist. God gives us all things, and all things work together: the foretaste of future glory and the knowledge of death and decay, the ache of waiting and the hope of something we do not yet have; the energy of the sun, and the oxygen we need to breathe; the gift of human love and the perfect love of our Lord from which we cannot be separated.
What can separate you from my perfect love? Do not fear. Do not fear. Do not fear.
Prayer:
Lord, thank you that we can never be separated from your love. Help us to trust your good and perfect plan. When we find ourselves being fearful, may we lean into your love even more, for we know that perfect love casts out all fear. Lord, when we go through deep waters and trouble, You are with us. When we go through rivers of difficulty, You are there beside us. When we walk through the fire, You are always there. Lord, thank you that you are about to do a brand-new thing!
(Isaiah 43)
Kari Dunham
Adjunct Professor of Art
Biola University
For more information about the artwork, music, and poetry selected for this day, we have provided resources under the “About” tab located next to the “Devotional” tab.
About the Artwork:
Paradise Camp Fire Murals (4 murals)
-Beauty Among the Ashes (Woman on chimney )
-Jesus (Jesus on wall of the Hope Christian Church)
-Eleanor (Child on wall of her home)
-Helen Pace Memorial (Woman on wall of her home)
Shane Grammer
2018-2019
Spray paint
Photographs by Terence Duffy
In November 2018, a devastating wildfire called the "Campfire" swept through the town of Paradise in Northern California. As the deadliest and most destructive fire in California history, it left 86 people dead; tens of thousands displaced; 18,804 buildings destroyed; and 153,000 acres burned. Artist Shane Grammer, who grew up near Paradise, was deeply touched over the devastation of the fire. When a friend of Grammer’s who had lost his home to the fire reached out to see if Grammer would be interested in painting what was left of his home, Grammer used his talents to transform the charred chimney of the home with a portrait of a woman, a piece called Beauty Among the Ashes. As a devout Christian, Grammer also painted several other murals, including one of Jesus on the remains of Paradise's Hope Christian Church. To Shane, the most powerful reactions to his work were when people saw beauty in those places for the first time since the tragedy.
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-col1-paradise-ruins-murals-camp-fire-20190618-htmlstory.html
About the Artist:
Shane Grammer is an artist whose work spans a variety of mediums with a focus on painting, illustration, and sculpture. Shane is currently a Senior Creative Director in the theme park industry. Grammer has art directed, managed, and led small to large teams through conceptual design, fabrication, and installation on entertainment projects all over the world. Walt Disney Imagineering has employed Shane’s skills as a master sculptor and creative visionary when they appointed him as Senior Dimensional Designer on a project for Shanghai Disney. His work can also be found throughout cities in Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Cambodia, South Korea, and Dubai.
Artist website: www.shanegrammer.com
About the Music:
“Nothing to Fear” from the album Nothing to Fear (Single)
About the Composer:
Audrey Assad, Paul Zach, and Isaac Wardell
Audrey Assad (b.1983) is the daughter of a Syrian refugee, an author, speaker, producer, and critically lauded songwriter and musician. She creates music she calls “soundtracks of prayer” on the label Fortunate Fall Records, which she co-owns with her husband. She is also one half of the pop band LEVV, whose debut EP peaked at #17 on the iTunes Alternative chart. In 2014, Assad released an EP, Death, Be Not Proud, which reflected on her recent encounters with loss and suffering--including her husband’s journey through cancer and chemotherapy. In 2018, after several years of personal pain and trials, Assad recorded her latest album entitled Evergreen, which stems from a season of renewed creativity. The album celebrates with new songs of rebirth, identity, the rebuilding of trust, and discovery of joy and love.
http://www.audreyassad.com/
Isaac Wardell is a record producer and composer who primarily writes sacred music. He is the Director of Bifrost Arts, an ecumenical organization closely linked to the Presbyterian Church in America that produces written and recorded religious music and frequently performs at Christian universities and conferences. Wardell founded Bifrost Arts in 2008 "to enrich the Church and engage the world with beauty and truth through music beautiful enough that non-Christians are attracted to it." He is also currently the Director for Worship Arts at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Charlottesville, Virginia.
https://www.trinitycville.org/Isaac-Wardell
Paul Zach (b. 1986) is the Director of Worship Portico Church located in Charlottesville, Virginia. “I used to describe myself as having a pretty big allergy to a lot of church music. By that I mean I felt like a lot of songs were making me say things to God that I didn’t want to say, or didn’t believe, so I think early on I perhaps spent time writing songs and picking songs for the church with a real chip on my shoulder. But I’ve gotten over a lot of that now, and actually since working for a church I feel much more creatively fulfilled than I ever did touring with a rock band, I think there’s something fun about writing songs that are meant to be sung together and if people aren’t singing with you then you aren’t doing your job right. It’s grounded me in a different way that’s really helpful for me. I’ve found that through seasons of doubt and facing those fears, songwriting for me has actually been one of my main ways to commune with God.”
https://www.paulzachmusic.com/
About the Performers:
In June 2017, a diverse group of Christian leaders and musicians met in New York City for the inaugural conference of the Porter’s Gate Worship Project. Spanning cultures, denominations, and traditions, the Project’s purpose is to engage culture and offer hospitality to the world, particularly through the unifying power of music. For three intense days, this group of artists, pastors, and scholars - including Josh Garrels, Audrey Assad, David Gungor, Aaron Niequist, Liz Vice, and Stuart Townend - engaged in meaningful conversation about the vocation of hospitality: “bringing work into worship and taking our worship to work.” The group also recorded a live, full-length album entitled Work Songs. The final song of the album, “Your Labor Is Not in Vain,” is a creative collaboration of Wendell Kimbrough, Paul Zach, and Isaac Wardell, and features Paul Zach and Madison Cunningham on vocals.
About the Poet:
Archie Randolph Ammons (1926–2001) was an American poet who won the annual National Book Award for Poetry in 1973 and 1993. Ammons wrote about humanity's relationship to nature in alternately comedic and solemn tones. His poetry often addresses religious and philosophical matters and scenes involving nature in a transcendental fashion. Among his major honors are the U.S. National Book Award, the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets, and a MacArthur Fellowship. Some of Ammons' poems are very short, one or two lines only, a form known as “monostich,” while others are hundreds of lines long, and sometimes composed on adding-machine tape or other continuous strips of paper. Ammons taught at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, for thirty-four years.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/a-r-ammons
About the Devotion Writer:
Kari Dunham
Adjunct Professor of Art
Biola University
Kari Dunham is an adjunct art professor at Biola University, Concordia University Irvine, and Irvine Valley College, and she earned her MFA in Painting from Laguna College of Art + Design. Through her practice of painting ordinary inanimate objects, she gives voice to the quiet corners and objects of the home, describing the thingness that is these objects and how they embody human presence and absence. Kari has also written for SEEN, the semiannual publication of CIVA (Christians in the Visual Arts).