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Advent Devotional for Monday, December 13
On a Saturday afternoon in August, the second to last day of the “Henri Matisse the Printmaker” exhibit at the Blanton Museum, my 13-year-old son, Isaiah, and I joyfully went to the exhibit, saying “We’re so glad we made it!” Inside, we noticed the creative and brilliant work, the sketches and prints that Matisse made—“the one as well as the other,” in independence or a series; one that began as sketch and transformed into a three-fold panel in comic-book style, where the primary and secondary colors told the story without words.
We came around to the next wall and were greeted by Matisse’s colorless self portrait. We paused longer—noticing his emotionally charged, sharp edgy angled stacked black right background (his right, our left), contrasted to the shades of gray and white facial expressions in the foreground. Ironically, the symmetry of face and background was on the one side asymmetrical to the other. For his left facial features were smooth, slightly rounded, peacefully dazed in a dreamlike state, white clouds in a blue sky. In contrast, his right facial expression was strong, jaded, focused on something, brilliantly angular and sharp. Yet, if you cover half the face, it’s quite the opposite. His softer rounded left eye, eyebrow, mustache, his unfinished left lapel (our right) really seems to be in anguish, with the former sharper (his) right side being more welcoming. Side by side, in “cross” lateralization, the two halves create a profound reflection.
Ecclesiastes (Qoheleth) also takes us into a world that is brilliantly dichotomous, inverted—a time to weep, a time to laugh, a time to seek, a time to lose (Qoh 3:1-8). Such a world colorlessly adds color. Consider that the “straight and crooked,” “the righteous and wicked,” “in prosperity and adversity,” “the birth and the crucifixion”—the one as the other, the other as the one (Qoh 7:14)—is indeed, the very work of God (Qoh 7:13).
Gracious God, during this joyous time of waiting and anticipating, may my heart also consider that last final anxious moment, leading to the cross. In Jesus’s name with thanksgiving I pray. Amen.
John Ahn
Assistant Professor of Old Testament
For the glory of God and to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary is a seminary in the Presbyterian-Reformed tradition whose mission is to educate and equip individuals for the ordained Christian ministry and other forms of Christian service and leadership; to employ its resources in the service of the church; to promote and engage in critical theological thought and research; and to be a winsome and exemplary community of God's people.
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