Almost all of my paintings have come from first being inspired by an idea or a message. That was not the case with this one. It was a photo I had taken of one of the girls in Mozambique and I just wanted to paint her … for a number of reasons! Actually she is still in process – I am still working on her – but not too long ago I was praying about what the title of this painting would be and kept getting the word “reason” or “the reason”.  I then researched the use of that word in the Bible. Ephesians 3:14 stood out to me right away. It starts out “For this Reason” …

For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what [is] the width and length and depth and height– to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Ephesians 3:14-19

Yes, it is for this reason, for these children, that I bow before the Lord. I need His riches in glory and the strength of His Spirit in my inner man. I need Him dwelling in my heart. I need to be rooted and grounded in His love – so that I can go and pour His love upon them. To the best of my knowledge her name is Carassa. I went to look up what the meaning of her name is and the closest match I found was of French origin and it means “Loving Touch”!

This entry was posted on Friday, August 7th, 2009 at 4:59 pm and is filed under Artwork, Thoughts & Communications . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.