The Palestinian Authority issued a commemorative stamp in May featuring the Wye River Accords with a picture of Yasser Arafat and President Clinton signing the document. The scene is from a photograph taken at the event, held at the White House last October. But Benjamin Netanyahu, recently defeated Prime Minister of Israel, who was in the photo, has been removed from the picture on the stamp. It almost seems prophetic.
This reminds me of an article I wrote for a Sunday school paper twenty years ago:
Adolph Friedrich Erdmann von Menzel was born in Breslau, Germany, in 1815 and died in Berlin in 1905. In between those dates, he became renowned for his fine paintings. He studied a little in the academy and more often by himself. At eighteen, he published his first work, a group of lithographs called An Artist’s Wanderings. It immediately attracted attention and Menzel was quickly catapulted to fame.
Around 1836, his work as an illustrator opened with four hundred pictures for a book on Frederick the Great. In these paintings, Menzel showed himself to be both original and historically accurate. In later years, he painted a staggering eight hundred more for other works on Frederick.
Definitely one of the outstanding German artists of his day, Menzel received the Order of the Black Eagle in 1899. But obviously I’m not telling you this because you have a consuming interest in German painters of the last century.
In the Berlin art gallery hangs a painting by Menzel of Frederick the Great talking to his generals. But in the center of the picture, there is a small, bare patch. The work is obviously unfinished. A faint charcoal outline indicates the artist’s intentions. He had skillfully and tediously painted in each general in his uniform, but had left the king till the last. Perhaps he thought he wasn’t ready to portray the king in this crowning work of his life. He wanted it to be just perfect. But Menzel died before he was able to finish.
Isn’t that like so many people today? They put in all the generals and leave the King to the last, with good intentions that grow more faint every day. They mean to put the King in the center. Someday. But somehow they never get around to it and eternity looms ahead with their hopes as faded as the charcoal sketch on Menzel’s canvas.
The search is going on today — a search for Christians willing to put the King first. The King Himself said, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you” (Mt. 6:33).
Is the King in your life just a faint outline, shrouded in good intentions? Or is He evident in all His vibrant glory, a living reality–the King in the center of your canvas?
This issue of Uplook features articles about biblical portraits of the Church. The illustrations are varied–a pastoral scene with sheep on the hillside; a domestic view with a bride getting ready for her wedding day; a construction site with a building rising to completion, to name a few. But what links these diverse word pictures is the central Figure in each one.
What is a bride without a bridegroom? A flock without a shepherd? A building without a foundation? A body without a head? Yes, what indeed! Tragedies every one.
Am I overstating the case by saying that the Church in the West, Laodicea-like, has every imaginable accoutrement (and some unimaginable, like teeth fillings reputedly turning to gold at the Toronto Airport Church!). Drama, praise bands, mass rallies, mega-buildings–rich and increased with goods, in need of nothing. Except the Man standing outside the door.
Acts 2:42 is a great place to start in defining local church life, but it should not be the end of it. The mechanics of the assembly are important–how, where, when, how often we do things. But the dynamic is essential. You cannot have a New Testament assembly without New Testament life. And “this life is in His Son.” Our motive, our focus, our resources, our objectives, are all to be found in the One who knocks at the door. He’s asking to come in. Does anyone hear His voice?