A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words!

For many years, I worked with learning challenged students, and one of the learning tools I taught them was visualization. I told them to picture the content they wanted to learn, to see it in their minds, making pictures of the concept or the page.  I also suggested that do more than read the words, but use all the senses they could in the process of learning.  They might see it, then imagine what it would sound like or say it out loud.  In some cases they could think what the material might smell like (this works better for some things than others) or even feel like to accomplish their goal, and the material would stick longer.  Those pictures are truly worth a thousand words when it comes to storing material.

For many years I was part of the number who didn’t understand the use of icons in prayer. I thought people actually prayed to the picture, but I have come to understand more about that icon, and how it is used in meditation.  The icon is really just a tool used to help the believer focus his or her attention on the God behind the story told in the icon.

A few weeks ago I was reading a book on sacred practices, and the topic came up again: the use of images in worship,  note in worship, not to worship.  Several images came to my mind, as I read, probably due to childhood Sunday School pictures:  of the cross, the tomb with the round stone in place, then rolled away, of Christ stepping over sleeping friends to get up early to pray, and of Christ getting into a boat to both get away from the crowd and to have a better place from which to teach.

As I meditated on each of those images, the reality of the God-Man Christ became more vivid, His pain and life experience more real, and tears began to fall.  Then I remembered seeing the movie: The Passion of the Cross, and its impact on me.  Once more, those images reinforced the words I had read in the gospels, the life of Christ.  It was real. He did live and die and rise again.  He was beaten.  He did all that for me, and you.

The pendulum always swings, doesn’t it.  In reaction to churches full of statues and glorious stained glass images, again teaching tools to cultures that had no written Bible for the common people, we, so much more sophisticated, or in fear of idolatry worship in barren boxes.( painting by Warner Sallman – Christ in Gethsemane – Christ-Centered Art found at  lupaintin.com  )

I know that the fear of idolatry or emotionalism is strong, but I wonder what we might be missing.  It also occurred to me to wonder if once more we have allowed busyness (even doing good things) to rob us, to cheat us from real worship, that exercise in showing God that we want to really know Him, that we want to honor Him, that we want to show Him our love, our adoration.   Those practices take time.

It is true, we could get carried away with admiring the human who made those images, but we can also be intentional about focusing on the God whose story is being told, and allow His Spirit to bring things to our minds as we are still before Him, not still before the picture, but still before the God of the picture.

I'm not trying to redesign churches today, just been thinking!