hope

Hope and transformation in Vietnam

Our friend tells our team that we will visit a village in the mountains where two kids started their lives who are now members of a Hope's Promise family for orphaned children and where Hope’s Promise implements a Thrive scholarship group for thirty orphaned and vulnerable children who live with relatives. That’s about all we…Read more Hope and transformation in Vietnam

Unquenchable

When I was young, I consumed missionary biographies like candy. These people seemed so daring, brave, other-worldly. Pressing to the ends of the earth with a message more valuable than their very lives. I read of men and women who lived for years with unreached people groups, simply to learn the language so the Bible…Read more Unquenchable

Refuge

Refuge; 19.75" x 11.5"; watercolor, ink, acrylic, water-soluble pastel. Another morning. Another heartbreaking headline. Mass shootings, earthquakes, climate change, disease. I wonder, Where can I go to escape this darkness? Even in the highest mountain refuge, the darkness is still there. In me. I think of Jesus’ words in Luke 21:25-28 “There will be signs…Read more Refuge

When God Weeps With Us

Weeping With Us; 2013; 20" x 29 1/2"; mixed media: watercolor, charcoal, pastel. Many years ago, I painted this image about grief and finding God so very present, actually weeping with me in it. Now, please allow me to share with you about a book written by a dear friend of mine that powerfully captures…Read more When God Weeps With Us

When the Physical Expresses the Spiritual

Tonia Nifong and Evelyn Wyss, 40:31 Dance Collective of Colorado Springs, "Hide me in the cleft." I am currently intrigued by the idea of the physical body as a seed for our eternal being, as a tangible hint of transcendent truth. Through artistic studies, I'm ruminating: What if our visceral beings germinate in the soil…Read more When the Physical Expresses the Spiritual

Hope When the World is Deconstructing

Immortal Seeds, Fall; 2022; 19" x 23"; watercolor, ink, acrylic, graphite, chalk. In Autumn, the world deconstructs. Leaves whirl, trees bend, flowers wilt. Do I believe God sometimes rescues us, that God is able to change circumstances with a mere thought? Yes! Absolutely! And sometimes He does. But sometimes fall yields to winter, and nights…Read more Hope When the World is Deconstructing

Evening Song

Evening Song; 2021; 15.5" x 25.5"; watercolor, acrylic, pastel, chalk, graphite, ink. John 1:5, "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome." There was a time not too long ago when the darkness hovered near. Chaotic world events and challenges all around leached me dry. I snuck away to a monastery for…Read more Evening Song

When the End is Only the Beginning…

Generations; 2021; 17" x 21"; mixed media: watercolor, acrylic, graphite. Time and space bind our lives; we glimpse but a sliver of eternity. We begin, we live, we leave. Playing our part in an epic adventure, our perceptions are limited to our minute senses. But there is One who holds it all together: By Whom,…Read more When the End is Only the Beginning…