YEAR END, PEACE AND PAINTING

YEAR END, PEACE & PAINTING … the way I see it.

Thanks for respecting my right to express a faith. This morning I looked into the face of Leonardo da Vinci's 'Salvator Mundi.  I saw peace.  Using the soft painting style of his 'Mona Lisa,' and 'John the Baptist,' da Vinci rendered the 'Saviour of the World,' holding a globe in his left hand (symbol for the world) and offering a sign for peace with his right. It is the Saviour's eyes that speak the language of peace. As 2017 ends, Peace is the antidote to life today.

The human spirit is fashioned to inhabit peace. Craving peace, humanity has confused peace with abundance, pleasure, ecstasy, altered states of consciousness, exhilaration, joy, and amusement. Peace remains absent. At auction at Christie's in New York on November 15, 2017, Salvator Mundi sold for a record $450,312,500.00. Someone possessed enough discretionary money to purchase the painting while another person begged for coins to buy a MacDonald's coffee. Peace is the antidote to life today. Whether one's situation is palatial or squalid, sumptuous or meagre, vigorous or indisposed, free or restrained, life carries inherently those experiences that are common to humanity. Life is burdened by distrust, poverties, melancholy, agony, misery, and sadness.

The eyes of the Salvator Mundi tell me that Peace only seems to be universally inaccessible. It is readily available but contingent upon a relationship with the Creator. On the night before he died, amid his disquieting comments to his frightened disciples, Jesus the Salvator said, “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” John 14:27 On that same evening he further stated, “These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” John 16:33. Christ's resurrection convinced the apostles that Jesus is the Prince of peace and the apostle Paul exhorts his listeners, "Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful." Colossians 3:15