I was contemplating the role of the artist in my life of faith. I envisioned myself inside an enclosed room, surrounded on every side by walls of time, the existential framework of our mortality. Outside those fixed yet opaque walls of my time box was eternity—the endless sweep of time and the limitless expanse of space. But there were windows in the walls of my time box. Not windows to open and shut, but windows to look into and through. The hazy fenestellae strewn randomly on every surface of my room were not just glass and wood; they were windowed works of art—words, music, sketches, paintings, photography, sculpture, carvings, glass, silver, gold, and more. Some were large and clear, some small and hazy, yet each oddly-shaped portal shone with many colors like a prism. And through any of them, like portholes in a stateroom looking out on the vast ocean of time, I could catch fleeting glimpses of the multi-colored eternity outside the walls they adorned. The source of their light and colors was hidden to my physical eyes, and yet the “eyes of my heart were enlightened.” Through the windows, I could see wonders beyond the walls of my mortality. Through the portals of art I was able to “traverse the valley of time” and to find the hope of eternity with God.
ON PANES OF GRACE
Windows made of ink and light,
Of color, note, and line;
Dim glass portals fixed within
This mortal frame of time.
On panes of grace we trace the fragile
Shades of His design:
Creator God, created and creation;
Hints of places just beyond our grasping.
Guided by the artist’s hands
We ‘verse the vale of time;
Seeing through the artist’s heart
We hold the hope divine.
(C) 2007 Clay Clarkson