March 26: “Sanctify Them in the Truth”
♫ Music:
Day 38 - Friday, March 26
Title: “SANCTIFY THEM IN THE TRUTH”
Scripture: John 17:13-19
But now I come to You; and these things I speak in the world so that they may have My joy made full in themselves. Father, I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I do not ask You to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth. As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. For their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth.
Poetry:
from Tickets for a Prayer Wheel
by Annie Dillard
I think that the dying
pray at the last
not “please”
but “thank you”
as a guest thanks his host at the door.
Falling from mountains
the people are crying
thank you,
thank you,
all down the air;
and the cold carriages
draw up for them on the rocks.
YOUR WORD IS TRUTH
Our world rushes and clashes so much it is easy to miss the enchantment of life. Afraid, angry, and preoccupied with dragging around millstones of responsibility, we become numb to the earth and numb to the soul. God hears endless petitions, “show us truth, let us find love, fix this, please.” At the end of life, poet Annie Dillard speculates the dying look up and cry, not “please,” but “thank you, thank you!” Oh, that we should live each day filled with the purpose and peace made available through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The night before his crucifixion, Jesus prays a wonderful intercessory prayer, a farewell blessing for those he is leaving. He petitions his Father for the preservation and sanctification of his own in the world. He utters his prayer out loud so the disciples will hear and know they are in God’s care. John wrote it down so that we also may have the same assurance.
Jesus does not ask for his followers to be spared the inevitable hardship and adversity that is part of earthly life. Rather he wants Christians to be more alive–to know the overwhelming joy of being caught up in the love shared by the Trinity. Such contentment transcends circumstances. It is the same joy that supported Jesus in the sorrow and loneliness of his work on earth. It is compassion that spills over into a hurting world and infects others.
He prays for us to be protected from the evil one so that we may accomplish the mission he has called us to do. Such protection demands a radically different agent than any human intellect, money, or position. Jesus wants us to be sanctified, conformed to holiness through obedience to the truth of God’s word.
Resurrection Book by artist Sandra Bowden visually expresses the transforming beauty of God’s truth. Inspired by Luke’s account of angels in the empty tomb who gleamed like lightning, the artist has layered and condensed the Greek text onto the pages of an open book. Gold leaf and metallic crayons create a mysterious, luminous surface that is both language and about language. The shimmering open pages embody the mystery to which the Word of God points: God with us.
The Son of God, who spoke the world into existence, became flesh and lived in the world he created. But he was never of the world, never corrupted by its ways. Jesus wants his followers to live with eyes wide open to the truth about the world, which is the desire to know the reason for life. We are meant to share in humanity’s suffering and fragility. Yet, through God’s infinite grace we are set apart for a meaningful, joyous life, animated by gratitude, humility, and love. Thank you, thank you!
Prayer:
You are our helper, Mighty One, and you are no respecter of persons. Help all your people bought with the precious blood of Christ. You are our fortress and defender. No one can snatch us from your hand. There is no other God like you. In you we trust. Sanctify us through your truth. Your Word is truth. Preserve us and all your people from injury and deceit, from fear of the enemy, from the arrow that flies by day, and the trouble that walks in the darkness, and grant us eternal life in Christ, your Son, our Lord and Savior.
Source: Liturgy of the Greek Church
Marianne Lettieri, M.F.A.
Visual Artist and Curator
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:
Resurrection Book
Sandra Bowden
2004
Mixed media with gold leaf
5.25 x 11.75 x 1.5 in.
Most of artist Sandra Bowden’s recent works use actual books that are permanently fixed open and finished to display a variety of surfaces, including raised Hebrew and Greek texts. The face of the Resurrection Book contains a passage in Greek from Luke 24, which recounts the story of the resurrection. The text was created as a collagraph using an etching press and then glued to the face of the book and painted a deep earthy clay red. It was covered with gold leaf and then a final application of iridescent oil crayon was applied to the surface. The luminous surface of the book recalls the cascading light of Christ’s resurrection that reaches deep into the heart of those who believe. The hope of the resurrection brings healing and peace when loved ones are lost and offers the promise of being in the presence of our Lord eternally.
About the Artist:
Sandra Bowden (b. 1943) is one of the most prolific and influential contemporary Christian artists working today, with over one hundred one-person shows to her credit, and is based in Massachusetts. Working primarily in printmaking and mixed media, her work has been inspired by her interest in archaeology, ancient Biblical languages and texts, geology, music, ancient illuminations, and the history of art. She is also an inspirational and sought-after speaker on art and faith. Bowden, an avid collector of religious art dating from the early fifteenth century to the present, makes her collection available for loan in exhibitions. She served as President of CIVA (Christians in the Visual Arts) from 1993–2007, a period of remarkable growth and development in the nonprofit’s history. Her work is held in many collections, including the Vatican Museum of Contemporary Religious Art, Brauer Museum, Atwood Museum, and the Haifa Museum. She studied at Massachusetts College of Art and received her B.A. from the State University of New York. A monograph of her work, The Art of Sandra Bowden, was published by Square Halo Books in 2005.
https://www.sandrabowden.com/
https://www.google.com/search?q=resurrection+book+bowden&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi-nbK___vsAhWGsZ4KHUZGC6MQ_AUoAXoECAwQAw&biw=2333&bih=1351#imgrc=xx1zAlPiHfb7CM
About the Music:
“The Truth About the World” from the album Low
Lyrics:
Have you grown tired?
Of feeling alone
Numb to the earth
And numb to the soul
Eyes wide open
Unafraid to be alive
You’re living and you’re breathing
Feels like, the very first time
You will make your way
Through, the valleys of your soul
Coming home to the truth
The truth about the world
Everyone is hurting
Everyone is searching
Everyone is looking, for the truth about love
For the truth, about a God
For the truth, about the world
About the Lyricist/Composer/Performer:
Andrea Marie, who is a member of the Knoxville-based band, United Pursuit, is married to popular worship leader and recording artist Will Reagan. The Reagans are part of a collective of musicians who play a live-streamed worship concert each Tuesday night from the Fifth Ave House in Knoxville, Tennessee. Low, which is Marie’s second solo album, is filled with piano-driven introspection and brilliant vocal writing. Thematically the project is clearly spiritual but feels intentionally devoid of specific Biblical references. The album vacillates between cinematic and simple, dramatic and innocent, reflective and groovy.
https://www.storiesjournal.com/story/2016/03/album-review-andrea-marie
About the Poet:
Annie Dillard (b. 1945) is an American author best known for her narrative prose in both fiction and nonfiction. She has published works of poetry, essays, prose, and literary criticism, as well as two novels and one memoir. Her 1974 work Pilgrim at Tinker Creek won the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. From 1980, Dillard taught for twenty-one years in the English department of Wesleyan University, in Middletown, Connecticut. She is a member of the Academy of Arts and Letters and has received fellowship grants from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Influenced by Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman, Dillard writes compressed, lyric poetry and prose that engages the balance of daily life within the frame of literature and ideas. Dillard’s numerous books include the poetry collections Tickets for a Prayer Wheel (1974) and Mornings Like This: Found Poems (1995); the nonfiction books Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974), winner of a Pulitzer Prize, National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, An American Childhood (1987), and For the Time Being (1999); and the novels The Living (1992); and The Maytrees (2007). Professor Emeritus at Wesleyan University, she lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina. A selection of her papers is archived at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Dillard
http://www.anniedillard.com/
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/annie-dillard
About the Devotion Author:
Marianne Lettieri, M.F.A.
Visual Artist and Curator
Marianne Lettieri is a curator and visual artist whose mixed media constructions and art installations investigate shifts in cultural and individual values associated with everyday objects and discarded materials. She presents these artifacts in new configurations that reinforce the interconnectedness of people and communities through time and infuse historical symbols with contemporary meanings. Solo exhibitions include Never Ending Thread at San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles; Marianne Lettieri: Reflections at San Francisco Museum of Craft and Design; Don’t Get the Wrong Impression at Fort Worth Community Art Center; and Changing Context at Azusa Pacific University. Numerous books and art journals have featured her art, including Placemaking and the Arts by Jennifer Allen Craft, Art-Making Collections & Obsessions by Lynne Perrella, Image Journal, SEEN Journal, and Ruminate Magazine. She has an M.F.A. in spatial arts from San Jose State University and a B.F.A. in drawing and printmaking from University of Florida. She has co-authored with Sandra Bowden the book, Seeing the Unseen: Launching and Managing a Church Gallery.
https://www.mariannelettieri.com/