Thursday, June 17, 2010

A Picture is Worth...

For those of you who may have found this blog from the New Life Christian Church website (http://nlccoe.com/), you may wonder why the picture...and what exactly is it?


The main focus of the picture is the statue of the "Servant King" - I do not know if that is the official name for the statue, but that is what I am most recently calling it. It depicts Jesus washing Peter's feet (cf. John 13). Let me rephrase that, it depicts the King of kings and Lord of lords (also the One in Whom creation is held together-cf. Colossians 1, the Lion of the tribe of Judah...Who is also a slain Lamb-cf. Revelation 5, the Alpha & Omega- cf. Revelation 1:8; 22:12-13, etc.) doing an extremely lowly task (understatement) of washing the feet of not just anyone, but one He knows will deny even knowing Him before the rooster crows (Jn13:38). Oh if only THE CHURCH would emulate this... So much more to say, but then again a picture is worth...

The statue is on the campus of Lincoln Christian University (http://lincolnchristian.edu/). The photo was taken on the day I graduated from the Seminary there (5/15/10).

The little girl touching Jesus' hair is our daughter, Ellei. If her name looks weird that is OK (the meaning behind it is more than weird to our world) - it is pronounced just like Elle (el with a "long e" on the end). It is spelled that way because it is a transliteration of a Greek word which means "He is merciful" - the He obviously being God. A prayer of ours (Melissa and I) is Ellei will be shaped by the reality of God's mercy and she will continually share it with others in both her words and deeds...

So here you have our firstborn child reaching out and touching Jesus (think of the woman who was healed/saved by touching "the fringe of His garment" in Luke 8) as He is serving a boastful braggart who would soon deny Him (think of both those "in the world" and sadly even those in the church who focus on themselves, which is sadly all of us at times...). There is so much more to say, but then again a picture is worth...
(way more than a thousand words...)