“ I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. ”
I haven’t posted about my New Jerusalem paintings in a while, because I’ve been stuck and didn’t have a vision for how to portray something so magnificent. I have a list of subjects but haven’t known how to paint them. However, I’ve seen a surprising increase in interest in my New Jerusalem paintings, with several people writing to me about them in a short period of time, as well as many people finding their way to this website, searching for one thing—New Jerusalem paintings.
I took it as a nudge from God to begin to paint them again. So I prayed, then began to search the internet to see what I could find about New Jerusalem. I came across a sermon where the pastor talked a lot about the simile of New Jerusalem looking like “a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.” He said that the first century church would have thought of a brightly colored wedding dress rather than the white ones of Western culture (these came much later). Loving color as much as I do, my imagination was fired. The pastor went on to say that the Yemeni Jews have kept first century culture more than any. I looked up images of their brides and found confirmation. These brides wear red, and stripes, and necklaces “down to their belts” as well as bracelets “up to their elbows.” Elaborate! I’d seen similar pictures of a Moroccan acquaintance’s wedding that was similar, and have seen brightly colored Central Asian wedding dresses, all of which, have helped me envision John’s simile.
I plan to blog my process in making this painting, so I begin with my preliminary sketch—definitely a “working drawing,” Next, I’ll draw the sketch onto tracing paper in order to transfer it to the 30”x40” canvas. This is a big task, so if you pray, please pray that I can do it well.