Isaiah 26:19, ‘Your dead will live; their bodies will rise. Awake and sing, you who dwell in the dust! For your dew is like the dew of *morning,* and the earth will bring forth her dead.
Today’s picture was created at the request of a friend, Izzie Thom (with whom I worked on the most recent animation). She was looking for a specific stained glass style, so this was a chance for me to try something fresh. It’s also unique in that it was not based on a specific text, but on the songs in Isabelle’s upcoming album (for which this piece will be the cover art). That being said, I tried to incorporate scripturally-rooted elements into the design and I think the text from Isaiah 26:19 is a fitting complement to the imagery.
Every morning the sun rises up from the earth, blazing with joy, welcomed with song, scattering the shadows, banishing the terrors, dissolving the Night and filling all the world with the light of its face. What is this but a celestial parable of the Resurrection of our Lord and—precisely as it pictures His resurrection—a prophesy and promise of our own?
Yes, morning is a promise. A promise of what? Not merely of light, but of *Risen Light*….not of light *instead* of darkness, but of light *beyond* darkness, of light that has already died in blood-red splendor, that has already sunk to the depths and lain in the grave…of light that knows the heart of the Night….and yet, *beyond all this* has risen…The light of the morning—like the glory of our God—is irreducibly and fundamentally ‘anastasiform’ (i.e., ‘resurrection-shaped).
Morning is the promise—inscribed in the heavens, woven into the patio-temporal fabric of the cosmos—that the heart pierced on Calvary’s Cross is beating right this second on Heaven’s Throne; that the Crucified Jesus is Risen….and if this is true, Christian, if the Sun is telling the truth, then Death is swallowed…then Fear is a liar…then Winter is passing, Spring is coming, Joy is dawning, the thorn will turn to the cypress, the wilderness will become a fruitful field, the barren womb of the earth will bring forth many children, and—as one of Isabelle’s lyrics anticipates—‘the fields are full of lilies.’
