March 23: The Saving Work of Christ
♫ Music:
Day 22 - Wednesday, March 23
Title: THE SAVING WORK OF CHRIST
Scripture: Psalm 20; Psalm 28: 6-9
May the Lord answer you in the day of trouble;
May the name of the God of Jacob defend you;
May He send you help from the sanctuary,
And strengthen you out of Zion;
May He remember all your offerings,
And accept your burnt sacrifice. Selah
May He grant you according to your heart’s desire,
And fulfill all your purpose.
We will rejoice in your salvation,
And in the name of our God we will set up our banners!
May the Lord fulfill all your petitions.
Now I know that the Lord saves His anointed;
He will answer him from His holy heaven
With the saving strength of His right hand.
Some trust in chariots, and some in horses;
But we will remember the name of the Lord our God.
They have bowed down and fallen;
But we have risen and stand upright.
Save, Lord!
May the King answer us when we call.
Blessed be the Lord,
Because He has heard the voice of my supplications!
The Lord is my strength and my shield;
My heart trusted in Him, and I am helped;
Therefore my heart greatly rejoices,
And with my song I will praise Him.
The Lord is their strength,
And He is the saving refuge of His anointed.
Save Your people,
And bless Your inheritance;
Shepherd them also,
And bear them up forever.
Poetry:
The Roof Nail
by Robert Bly
A hundred boats are still looking for shore.
There is more in my hopes than I imagined.
The tiny roof nail lies on the ground, aching for
the roof.
Some little bone in our foot is longing for heaven.
THE SAVING WORK OF CHRIST
The day of trouble, a reference to upcoming battle, is a fitting theme for the season of Lent. A season when we are reminded of our state of helplessness. Perhaps with this broken world of war and sickness and isolation, we feel it more than ever. It may be difficult to declare with confidence that the Lord will answer with the saving strength of his right hand, that we will see all the sad things come untrue anytime soon. On the one hand, it happened for David, and again it happened more magnificently as Jesus died on the cross and rose again. But as news stories flash, as loss and grief touch our own lives, it may be difficult to live in a felt reality of hopefulness. This brokenness is conveyed poignantly in the early layers of Dan Callis’ artwork––the thick black bands of separation and isolation he added at the beginning of the pandemic.
Yet the season of Lent occurs during the transition of winter into spring as the days lengthen and the night diminishes. As we arrive at the midpoint of Lent, we look to the cross to remind us of the completed work of Christ, the victorious conclusion following the day of trouble, even as we wade through these transition days. The Name of the Lord appears in the Psalm not only for the prelude and conclusion, but for the parts in between.
Robert Bly’s poem conjures an image of countless boats tossing in the expanses of the troubled waves in contrast with the one who is on the solid ground. Those who are adrift, with someone setting a foundation. Yet I imagine the tide changing, slowly gathering the boats onto the beach wave by wave, drawing these travelers ever nearer. Perhaps they see the roof being put up, the nail going in, and are filled with hope.
Callis adds layers to his piece over time, light tones crossing the black expanse joining one another. Crosses form like blooming flowers at the intersections. Here is a work of art that transitions along with us from darkness into light as these vine-like lines grow their way over hopelessness.
In a similar way, it is significant that today’s Psalms begin on the day of trouble, the eve of battle, but end in the shepherd’s field. What length of time passes between these two images? What does the transition look like? A battle must still be fought, with the pain and devastation that inevitably goes along with it. But with our Good Shepherd, we know ultimately there will also be repairing, cleaning, healing, growing, until a pasture of life has overgrown the battlefield.
The cross is the ultimate victory that we look to for hope, but the residue of the ashes from the first day of Lent may still be felt daily as we make our way to Easter. We experience the victory in layers of completion. In the lengthening of days, in the tide coming in, in the growing vines of connection, not yet fully realized but full of hope. Perhaps in this time of transition we resonate more with the prayer of the Psalmist that God, His presence among us, would, like the tide, bear us up forever.
Prayer
Father, let us remember Jesus' prayer over us that we would be kept in your name, bear us through days of trouble, and fix our eyes on the hope of the cross and its ultimate victory.
Amen
Stacie Poston
Adjunct Instructor
Torrey Honors College at Biola University
Children’s Ministry Lead at Redeemer Church, La Mirada, CA
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:
Hail Mary
Dan Callis
2020
Oil on canvas
60 x 72”
When the Covid-19 quarantine began in 2020, artist Dan Callis turned to painting a new series of works to express the impact of the pandemic upon his life. Each new canvas began with an atmospheric field of color that created a sense of expansiveness. Then, in response to the initial shutdown, he disrupted the expansive color field with black vertical bars. Feeling a profound sense of being cut off from so much in his life––teaching, his extended family, his community—Callis slowly began to adjust and establish new daily rhythms in relation to the ongoing global pandemic. As he was thinking about the web or network of communal relations––as well as national and global relations––he thought about how actions inform how we weave together each of our own communities. These thoughts generated the vertical and horizontal patterns that begin to bisect the foreground of the picture plane. At the intersection of several of the axes of these lines, crosses are formed, and within each cross there are rosary beads stitched onto the canvas. Traditionally, the rosary is a string of beads used to guide an ongoing practice of prayer, including a prayer called the “Hail Mary.” In American football, a “hail mary” is a desperate attempt to score late in the game. For Callis, somehow both of these definitions seem appropriate to the work. Imposed onto of the whole composition is a cadmium red pattern set at diagonal that visually asserts itself as additional pattern demanding and/or inviting a more complex and dynamic read of the composition; a composition in flux. Perhaps the canvases are prayer offerings, or they are desperate attempts to plot the unplottable. Perhaps they are both.
About the Artist:
Daniel Callis is an American artist and educator living in Southern California. He grew up an hour southeast of Los Angeles, surrounded by orange groves, kidney-shaped swimming pools, and historic Spanish Colonial Revival architecture. His childhood was immersed in the visual richness of the SoCal semi-desert coastal landscape, surf and car culture, and Hanna-Barbera and Looney Tunes cartoons. Callis received his B.S. in drawing and painting from California State University, Fullerton. He received his M.F.A. from Claremont Graduate University which culminated with Callis receiving the Los Angeles County Museum of Art Graphic Arts Council’s Young Talent Award. Working within a variety of media and visual traditions, Callis’ artwork speaks into personal and cultural histories that are continually updated, altered, discarded, reexamined, deconstructed, and reconstructed. His work explores the poetics found at the intersection of materials and process. Daniel’s teaching experience includes a decade working in special needs communities at Cypress Community College, Mt. San Antonio College, Azusa Pacific University, and University of Southern California. He currently teaches at Biola University, where he is a professor of drawing, painting, and transdisciplinary studies. In addition to his individual studio practice, Callis has collaborated extensively, including partnering with individuals with physical and developmental disabilities, working with a field biologist in Baja, Mexico, a sociologist in Las Vegas, a theologian from Duke Divinity School, a poet/musician from Orange County, and a performance artist/puppeteer from Rhode Island. His latest collaboration is a multi-artist response to the music of American composer Morten Lauridsen. Callis was honored in 2020 to have three of his paintings included in an exhibition at the Chiba City Museum of Art as part of the 20th Japan International Art Exchange Exhibition, which coincided with the 2020 Summer Olympics.
https://www.dancallisart.com/bio
About the Music:
“The Lord Is Our Salvation” from the album Facing a Task Unfinished
Lyrics:
The grace of God has reached for me
And pulled me from the raging sea
And I am safe on this solid groundThe Lord is my salvation
I will not fear when darkness falls
His strength will help me scale these walls
I'll see the dawn of the rising sun
The Lord is my salvation
Who is like the Lord our God?
Strong to save, faithful in love
My debt is paid and the vict'ry won
The Lord is my salvation
My hope is hidden in the Lord
He flow'rs each promise of His Word
When winter fades I know spring will come
The Lord is my salvation
In times of waiting, times of need
When I know loss, when I am weak
I know His grace will renew these days
The Lord is my salvation
Who is like the Lord our God?
Strong to save, faithful in love
My debt is paid and the vict'ry won
The Lord is my salvation
And when I reach my final day
He will not leave me in the grave
But I will rise
He will call me home
The Lord is my salvation
Who is like the Lord our God?
Strong to save, faithful in love
My debt is paid and the vict'ry won
The Lord is my salvation
Glory be to God the Father
Glory be to God the Son
Glory be to God the Spirit
The Lord is our salvation
Glory be to God the Father
Glory be to God the Son
Glory be to God the Spirit
The Lord is our salvation
Who is like the Lord our God?
Strong to save, faithful in love
My debt is paid and the vict'ry won
The Lord is my salvation
The Lord is our salvation
The Lord is our salvation
About the Performers/Composers:
Keith and Kristyn Getty occupy a unique place in the world of music today as preeminent modern hymn writers. In reinventing the traditional hymn form, they have created a distinguished catalog of songs teaching Christian doctrine and crossing genres by connecting the world of traditional and classical composition with contemporary and globally accessible melodies. These modern hymns are rooted in the traditions of Celtic and English hymns handed down to the Northern Ireland–born couple and their longtime writing partner, Stuart Townend. Their best-known hymn, “In Christ Alone” (penned by Keith and Stuart and recorded by Keith and Kristyn), echoes this heritage and has been voted one of the best-loved hymns of all time in the U.K.
https://www.gettymusic.com/
About the Poet:
Robert Bly (1926–2021) was an American poet. He studied at Harvard University where he joined the famous group of writers which included Donald Hall, Adrienne Rich, John Ashbery, Harold Brodky, George Plimpton, and John Hawkes. In 1956 he received a Fulbright Grant to travel to Norway and translate Norwegian poetry into English. While there, he found not only his relatives but the work of a number of major poets largely unknown in the United States, among them Pablo Neruda, Cesar Vallejo, Gunnar Ekelof, Georg Trakl, and Harry Martinson. After returning to the United States, he started a literary magazine for poetry translation which introduced many of these unknown poets to the literary world. During the 1970s he published eleven books of poetry, essays, and translations, celebrating the power of myth, Indian ecstatic poetry, meditation, and storytelling. During the 1980s he published Loving a Woman in Two Worlds; The Wingéd Life: Selected Poems and Prose of Thoreau; The Man in the Black Coat Turns; and A Little Book on the Human Shadow. Recent books of poetry include What Have I Ever Lost by Dying?, Collected Prose Poems, and Meditations on the Insatiable Soul. Bly’s collection Morning Poems, named for William Stafford’s practice of writing a poem each morning, revisits the Minnesota farm country of his boyhood with marvelous wit and warmth. He has recently published The Maiden King: The Reunion of Masculine and Feminine in collaboration with Marion Woodman.
https://www.robertbly.com/biography.html
About the Devotion Author:
Stacie Poston
Adjunct Instructor
Torrey Honors College at Biola University
Children’s Ministry Lead at Redeemer Church, La Mirada, CA
Stacie Poston completed her graduate studies in biology, focusing on cell and molecular biology and immunology, before taking time to raise her family of four kids with her husband. Stacie is now a part of running the children's ministry at Redeemer Church, and enjoys stepping onto Biola's campus to discuss Great Books. She loves to see how God's hand is evident in all the big and small parts of life.