By Kelly Kruse – Curator – The Four Chapter Gallery – Downtown Campus
What is the primary language humanity uses to communicate with God? There are any number of ways we could attempt to answer this difficult question. Perhaps you’d answer with the name of your native tongue. Some might respond that God communicated to a particular people at a particular time and place through a particular language—Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek.
But what if we thought more broadly than this? God has spoken to humanity in various languages throughout history, including those that are nonverbal, and he speaks to us in countless ways today, including the use of images.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve processed ideas through images. I often remember the details of a story like a scene from a movie and tend to picture abstract concepts visually. As an artist, I get my best painting ideas during sermons or when reading complex passages, when my intellectual imagination comes alive.
It’s only natural that when I talk to God, it often happens through images. This manifests in my work as a visual artist and through a regular practice of beholding beauty with intentionality. It is how I reveal the inner landscape of my heart to the Father, and how I have done so since I was very young.
Having my eyes opened
Interestingly, it took me quite some time to realize the images I was attempting to convey in my artwork were in some way being given to me. It was years before I realized that the Holy Spirit was first revealing the landscape of God’s heart to me, then I was mirroring it back to him.
As an artistically inclined person, you might think I’ve always been aware of these concepts, but that’s not the case, because “speaking” in images and “hearing” God through images is a topic that was not frequently discussed in the church or society of my childhood. For years, I attributed the images I’d see to my “overactive” imagination—a negative identifier I’d been given on report cards by adults who didn’t value visual language.
Years later, I realized that God spoke as powerfully to me in images as he did in words. When I embraced the idea of praying through images, my communion with God grew deeper and wider, with a whole new vocabulary for worship at my fingertips.
A note to the non-artist
You may be absorbing these words and thinking, “I’m not the artsy type.” And I would respond, “That doesn’t mean God cannot speak to you through images.” You don’t have to make images to receive a message from God through them in the same way you don’t have to understand or articulate artistic concepts to see something beautiful in a piece of artwork.
Artwork doesn’t exist only for the gratification of the artist and images given by God don’t always belong exclusively to the one who first sees them. There are myriad examples of powerful images and visions received by biblical figures. One of the first that comes to mind is Isaiah’s vision of the throne room in Isaiah 6. This powerful, vivid vision was given to Isaiah specifically, but when we read that passage today, God is still able to speak to us through it. The vision was given for our benefit, too. The same can be true of any work of art that comes through an artist.
If you are able to see, whether with your physical eyes or imagination, God is able to speak to you through images, and you’ve probably tasted some of the feast that’s available to you in that space.
An invitation to divine seeing
Visio divina, or divine seeing, is a contemplative prayer practice that dates back to the Middle Ages. It’s the practice of gazing upon any visual stimuli with intentionality, whether it be a work of art or a sunset. During this process, the viewer watches and waits expectantly to see something revealed by the Holy Spirit, and then they spend time contemplating what God might be trying to impress upon them, through prayer.
The windows of our soul are assaulted daily by a deluge of visual information, and much of it comes from various screens in our lives. Many of us mindlessly consume these images, often without even seeing them or understanding the power they have to shape our very souls.
Practicing visio divina, both alone and in community, has helped me strengthen my focus and ability to see and hear God even in this world of never-ending distraction. It has also helped me learn to quiet my soul in humility and wait for God (Psalm 131). Like a challenging Bible verse or poem, an image is something that requires time and contemplation from the viewer. You have to search it in order to see what’s really there, to accept that you can’t see it all immediately. Such humility, time, and attention are all essential ingredients for a dynamic relationship with the Lord.
Seeing images versus using them
It’s important to note that images, artwork, and beautiful things don’t exist simply to suit our aesthetic preferences, despite what any social media algorithm might train your soul to expect. When we set out to see and receive, our first concern cannot be whether or not we “prefer” a work. If that is our first question, we do the work a disservice, and instead of seeing the work, we end up using it for our own ends, missing what is there entirely. I’ve borrowed this language of seeing and using from C.S. Lewis, who gives brilliant insight into how to really see images in his work, An Experiment in Criticism.
Today, the average person spends ten seconds or less viewing a work of art in a museum before moving on to the next work. Recently, some members of the Downtown Campus Creative Community attended the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art to practice visio divina together. We stood together in front of a series of paintings in silence and then discussed what we saw and what God might be inviting us to contemplate. The results were astonishing. We were all richer for having shared the experience together and the depth and breadth of what God could reveal to each of us through the same work was as unique as each person in attendance.
The reward of gazing on beauty
The aim of visio divina is not to become good at understanding a particular work of art. It is to keep awake, to increase our attentiveness, and to see our vision sharpened. With that sharper vision, we can hope to see some aspect of Christ revealed, and to be given a deeper and broader language with which to praise him.
We are mere creatures, and while the mysteries of creation are too wonderful for us to grasp fully (Psalm 139), God can reveal a sliver to us day by day, increasing our capacity to one day behold his face. And on that day, we will be drawn into a divine seeing that is so beautiful, eternity will not feel long enough to gaze on each detail we’ll find there.
