PROSPERING SOUL LENT EXHIBITION (2019)
/For Lent this year, we commissioned our good friend, Mat Barber Kennedy to create a HUGE piece for us. Graphite and Charcoal on Paper, 22.6’ x 2’! It was that huge! He did an absolutely beautiful job. The idea was to create a wilderness scene, because that really is the invitation of Lent - to enter into the wilderness. This was the write-up for this exhibition:
We’re not ready for Easter. We’re not ready for the feasting that is the resurrection. We move through life so fast and before we know it, Easter is upon us. Our hearts aren’t prepared. Our minds aren’t clear. Anticipation is absent. The season of Lent is an invitation to enter into the wilderness not because that’s where God is, but because in that desolation we can actually feel, contemplate and anticipate. It is a pilgrimage into a severe landscape. It is an invitation to cling to the promise of something better, to plod forward fueled by the hope of the resurrection, to open our hands both to let go and to receive something better. It is in our longing and hunger and discomfort that we meet our weakness and confront the needs we thought we had filled.
The viewer is invited into this wilderness, an overwhelming experience outside our safety zones and comfort zones. It is mankind transported into a place of helplessness and hopefulness. These people are not embarking on a fun holiday outing. They are not part of a hiking excursion. They come by boat. They come by bike. And they come in their everyday clothes to enter into this journey. They’re walking along paths, but there’s no end-point. We don’t know where they’re headed. There’s an element of trust here, dependence and reliance on God for endurance, provision and safety. And these are well-worn paths - there’s a sense of history, a sense of tradition. People have come this way before. People have made this journey before, evidenced in the discarded items along the way.
Like the people within this wilderness, the viewer is invited on a journey of their own. What might God desire to show you through this wilderness season? In what ways will he help you learn to love the future? In what ways will he help you learn to lay down your own kingdom in exchange for the King’s kingdom? The viewer is invited to slow down and enter into this pilgrimage.
