Kate’s Reviews > Rembrandt is in the Wind: Learning to Love Art through the Eyes of Faith > Status Update

“We remember him for his words, his life, and his struggle.… He is a striving man from Ecclesiastes— learning firsthand about the vanity of toil under the sun, while trying to live, move, breathe, and do his work under heaven. He chases after the sun and never reaches it. He bears the weight of a creation “subjected to futility” and longs for the renewal of all things.”

😭😭😭

“This is the intangibility of gene— to create work that transfers from the canvas, the page, or the instrument into the heart of another person, arousing a longing for beauty and an end to sadness. This is what Vincent wanted to create— art that would transfer from his easel into someone else’s soul to work as a bomb of healing for the broken.”

“Someday soon… Jesus will stand and say to widows and thieves alike, “Peace! Be still!” His words will be followed by an unprecedented, eternal calm. Knowing this helps us now. Whatever we suffer, we will not grieve as those who have no hope. So we learn to hope in a coming kingdom. But we do so, knowing that in this one, at least for now, Rembrandt is in the wind.”

Caravaggio‘s life reminds us that we who embody the sacred and the profane have an enormous capacity to hurt each other. Caravaggio lived a destructive life. But his art shouts into that chaos…as Christ could call the tax collector to follow him or draw from the hardest heart the beauty & wonder that poured out… our Lord‘s capacity to extend grace is greater still…Grace transforms even the hardest hearts.

“Mercy as a costly endeavor, something that cannot be done without fully entering into the misery and need of another…”

“Our best attempt at achieving perfection this side of glory come from an innate awareness that it not only exists, but that we were made for it.”

“Living with limits is one of the ways we enter into beauty we would not have otherwise seen, good work we would not have chosen, relationships we would not have treasured. For the Christian, accepting our limits is one of the ways we are shaped to fit together as living stones into the body of Christ. As much as our strengths are a gift to the church. So are our limitations.”

“Beauty is a relic of Eden— a remnant of what is good. It comes from a deeper realm. It trickles into our lives as water from a crack in a dam, and what lies on the other side of that damn fills us with wonder and fear. Glory lies on the other side. And we were made for glory.”

“Story is a Trojan horse for truth. It can sneak truth, pass the gates of our defenses and prepare our hearts to hear things we might have resisted if they had come as mere declaration. Jesus relied on storytelling as his primary method of teaching…to persuade the Jews to empathize with Samaritans, wealthy people to care for the poor, and religious people to have compassion on societies fringe”