Artist’s Statement

“The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.” Zephaniah 3:17

Zephaniah 3:17 was Twin Oaks Presbyterian Church’s verse of the year for 2003. [That’s the church I served in as a pastor from 2000 to 2004.] Pastor Rodney Stortz, in preaching his sermon on the text, testified to how the God of this verse had used this Word to comfort him greatly in the trials of his battle with cancer. Indeed it is a beautiful and profound truth – that the God of the Universe delights and rejoices in His children who are in Christ.

This sculpture seeks to capture if ever so slightly the tremendous delight the Father has in His children. The piece is full of energy. Jesus, though kneeling, bubbles over with life and abandon as all His being is centered upon the object of His affection: the little child in His hands. It is as author Brennan Manning says of God’s love for the redeemed, when he sarcastically jabs, “If only this God would show some restraint in His love for us!” (paraphrase).

In His abandon, Jesus’ head is thrown back with joy. He’s leaning almost off balance for His excitement over this, His precious one. He cares not that, though He’s God, He kneels and that His tunic is getting dirty, for He’s so captivated that He’s overcome with affection. His heart-revealing smile/laugh expresses the deep glee His feels over this prize of redemption. It’s the kind of smile/laugh that causes crinkles in the nose and at the outside of the eyes. If the sculpture could talk, surely Jesus would be letting out a shout of delight (or, as the verse says, singing a song of delight).

But Jesus is not the only one in this sculpture who’s delighting. The gleeful youth held safely in Jesus’ hands is full of joy, too. Head flung back, mouth dropped open, and arms outstretched as if imitating a bird set free in flight, this little youth is lost in the delight of his God for him. The child’s delight is derivative – it comes as a result of his experiencing Jesus’ delight in him. This follows from what teacher and pastor John Piper often writes, that “God is most delighted when we find our delight in His delight in us” (paraphrase).

Looking at the two figures together, it is clear that this sculpture is about relationship. More specifically, it is about the intimate relationship between the Living God who delights to show mercy and the objects of His mercy. These two simple figures express a transcendent connection that, though lofty and mysterious, finds a root in the depth of the soul. They are connected at the deepest place, which, for the man is the nephesh, referring to the Hebrew word for the deepest part of a man, the part that came alive when God breathed into Adam and he became a living being. There is real love, real intimacy, and real relationship between the two.

It is really true that God really does delight, emotionally, in His children in Christ. It is not some reason-only, intellectual-only, systematized delight, but an almost reckless abandon, an almost giddy and passionate delight that leads Him to, as Zephaniah 3:17 says, sing over the objects of His affection. If you have confessed your sins to Jesus put your trust in Him for eternal life, the Bible says that the delight expressed in this text is yours. Gaze at the sculpture and rejoice, child of God, deeply loved!