Editor’s note: Jake Weidmann is a professional artist and has been certified as one of nine Master Penmen in the world. In his book Old Soul, New Creation, He encourages us that every creative endeavor we undertake is a testimony to how God made us in His image. We’re made to embrace our calling from Him and rely on God for inspiration. Enjoy this excerpt.
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At one point, Hannah asked me how I was able to cope.
I told her I needed to do something with my pain, and putting it to work seemed the most edifying option. While it might have seemed natural to run from my suffering, that is not the way of the cross.
- At no point does the Lord tell us to give up when the going gets hard.
Instead, as we read in Matthew 16:24, Jesus told His disciples to take up their cross and follow Him. And this view of suffering echoes across the New Testament. In James 1:2 we are told to “count it all joy” when we meet various trials, while in Romans 5:3–4 we are encouraged to “rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.” Our suffering, then, when endured for the purposes of our Savior, ultimately leads not to our destruction but to new creation.
Perhaps you are suffering in this very moment — creatively or otherwise. You may be struggling with pain or brokenness, whether inflicted by the sins, shortcomings, or mishaps of others or your own. My friend, bring it all to the cross. You need not suffer in vain.
Behold, He is making all things new (Revelation 21:5)! And what is more, even as you persevere, He is present in His kindness and care:
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. — Matthew 5:4
You are blessed. Be comforted. Seek the cross in the midst of your suffering.
God has promised to rescue and redeem you.
With the restoration [of an intensive vellum project] complete, I embarked again upon the calligraphy piece. At every step I sought to draw attention to the mysterious work of Christ upon the cross. I set the hymn within a cruciform outline, employing different scripts for each line to emphasize their meaning. One of the more prominent is Fraktur, a calligraphic hand that originated in the monasteries of medieval Europe. Taking this hand at its literal meaning, I used it to symbolize the breaking of Christ, the incarnate Word, upon the cross.
I surrounded the outline with flourishing acanthus leaf. While you may have seen these leaves adorning the capital of an ancient Greek column, they are more than just an appealing motif, having been interpreted to represent eternal life on one hand and sin and suffering on the other. And as for the hymn’s title, I painted it to look like alabaster to suggest the broken jar in Bethany whose contents prepared Christ for His burial (Mark 14:3–9).
The other colors in the piece are likewise chosen for their symbolic properties: purple, which evoked high status among the ancient Romans, points to Christ as “King of kings and Lord of lords” (Revelation 19:16); green, which signifies flourishing, reflects Jesus’ teaching that He came to bring life, and life abundantly (John 10:10); and gold, which medieval scribes used to evoke the heavenly, is here used to symbolize eternal glory (Hebrews 12:2).
Once I finished the central piece, I exchanged the scriptorium for the woodshop and began carving the cross and frame. I found this change helped reinvigorate my passion for the project, which is just as well because the bitter cold was setting in. Given the cleaning crew’s mishap (which is how I euphemistically like to put it these days), I was no longer carving during the summer months as planned, but through the dead of a Colorado winter.
Each frigid morning, I put on my Carhartt coveralls and jacket and stepped into the freezing woodshop to take up the work of my cross, my fingers growing numb as they clung to the carving chisels for hours on end. But far from despising my labor, I was deeply enjoying the work.
With my goal in sight, the pain became less noticeable and, in some ways, even enjoyable as I came to associate it with a good full day of work. My frigid, calloused hands and tired shoulders were not a cause for complaint but rather a testament to the progress made.
- As God has done throughout my story, I found that as I created in His image, He created something new in me.
I began to understand more deeply the meaning of passion — or, rather, His Passion — and it was revealed to me in three ways:
The first, suffering, might seem obvious. And in fact, it is the root meaning of the word, even if one rarely thinks of suffering when they say they are passionate about something. Yet through this process I found it less overwhelming the more willing I was to invite the Lord into its midst and embrace His purposes within it.
The second is endurance, which, it turns out, is actually the original word’s secondary meaning. Our Lord’s Passion then is not a momentary fixation or affliction but an experience of prolonged endurance for the joy set before Him. If that is so, I should not
expect any quick fixes either. Instead, I have been called to persevere with patience, even as a project gets derailed and my hard work seems to come to nothing.
The third and final way relates to devotion. Again, let’s return to its original meaning, which is “sacrificial prayer.” While there are many things I have devoted myself to over the years, I have never been so passionately devoted to one creative endeavor. Day after day, week after week, and month after month, I was drawn back to the cross. I sacrificed my time, my hands, my energies, and even my suffering, prayerfully offering them up to the One who had offered Himself as a sacrifice for me. And He met me there, in the midst of it all.
On the final day of carving, Hannah called our children, Emma and Henry, to the garage door, and they prayed over me before I finished. I bent low and picked them up as they reached for me. Each in their turn prayed the sweetest of prayers over their daddy. Much had been suffered, much had been endured, but this work of long devotion was finally completed — fifteen long months after its inception.
The piece was intended for public display, much as Bennard’s hymn was intended for congregational singing, and yet — like Bennard himself — I treasured the long days spent in solitude working away at it, little by little. It was truly my passion project. And as much as I was familiar with the hymn, the difficult process of its creation became a means of encountering God and the mystery of the cross more deeply than ever before.
To speak of picking up my cross as a follower of Christ has taken on a whole new meaning through this long and arduous artistic journey. Rather than some mere signifier of a Christian artist, the cross has recentered and reframed my life. It informs everything I do — whether that be creating, loving and serving others, or surrendering my gifts to God in prayerful devotion. It is true that I shall never know the extent of Jesus’ suffering on the cross, and that itself is good news. But what I have learned is this: The suffering we endure as His followers can, however mysteriously, increase our appreciation for His.
- May we learn then that suffering is not something to run from but an instrument the Lord can use to create something new within us, making us ever more into the image of His Son.
Excerpted with permission from Old Soul, New Creation by Jake Weidmann, copyright Jake Weidmann.
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Your Turn
What would happen if you viewed your suffering differently? What if what you’re enduring is pointing you to Him? ~ Devotionals Daily