God will provide the Lamb

"God will provide the Lamb"

Michael R. Carter

32" x 14"

Oil on corrugated cardboard

     And Isaac spoke to Abraham his father and said, "My father!" And he said, "Here I am, my son." And he said, "Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?" And Abraham said, "God will provide for Himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son." So the two of them walked on together.

Genesis 22:7,8 NASB

     Tests come in many forms. Teachers test their students. People test our patience. Situations test our convictions. Chapter 22 of Genesis begins with these words:

'Now it came about after these things, that God tested Abraham...'

Teresa of Avila, in the Interior Castle, commented-

"We are fonder of consolations than we are of the Cross. Test us, Lord- for You know the truth- so that we may know ourselves."

     Tests are life's litmus paper, revealing the acidity or baseness of our character. Abraham's test revealed his faith.

The texture of Truth tempers the test.

     This painting is the result of a friend's question- "Have you considered painting the story of Abraham?" Click here for the original post.

    
      As the painting progressed, the work became a collaborative effort. My friend noticed the Hebrew word for love- ahava- contained within Abraham's name.  Two names, Abraham and Elohim, touch at the tip of the ram's horn. The tip of the horn crosses the final letter of Abraham, forming the A of AHAVA. The ram's horn later became an instrument, the shofar, to be blown on Rosh Hashanah. In this image, God and Abraham meet at the mouthpiece of the shofar. In the blowing of the shofar, God-breathed man offers breath in return, as a reminder of sacrificial love.

   

     As a final note, the inclusion of two Arabic words were suggested- the word for 'sacrifice' on the left and the word 'Moriah' on the right. In the story of Abraham, three faith-groups meet: Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

     If the viewer 'reads' the painting from the left, the story begins with an instrument of death. If, however, the painting is treated as the reading of Hebrew, the story begins with the sacrificial life. And in the middle are the thorns. 

God Will Provide the Lamb

    "Behold, the Lamb of God

who takes away the sin of the world!"

John, the Baptizer, upon seeing Jesus

      My friend, Deborah Mrantz, challenged me in a email. She wrote, 'Have you considered doing something (visually) with Abraham?' So, while driving, this came to me-

I imagined a series of three images- A knife, thorns and a ram's horn.

I roughed out a quick version on corrugated paper-

God Will Provide The Lamb

Oil on Corrugated Paper

The layers within the Hebrew language run deep, forming a network that both inspires and defies human comprehension. Within the verses of text the individual words speak; within the words the individual characters have a voice.

In Genesis, chapter 22, Abraham and his son Isaac are climbing a mountain when Isaac asks, "Where is the lamb for the sacrifice?" Abraham replies,

"God will provide the lamb."

In my minds-eye I saw the Hebrew lettering for 'the lamb' amidst the thorns, between the knife and the horn. It was as I painted these characters that I focused on their nature as letterforms. The expression 'the lamb' is constructed with three characters: 

The two outer characters are both the letter Hey, making the sound of a breath:

Originally, the character symbolized two outstretched arms.

The character says, 'Behold!' 

During a Jewish wedding ceremony, the couple whispers to each other, "Behold (hey), I will try with all my being to be present for you."

(from The Book of Letters by Rabbi Lawrence Kushner).

The name of the character in the center of 'the lamb' is

sin:

To the ancients, the character symbolized teeth, meaning to devour or consume.

As I meditated on the letters and their meanings, 'the lamb' became pictured to me hebraically as sin, enclosed, consumed and destroyed between the outstretched arms of God the Father and God the Holy Spirit-

the three-in-one God who promises, with all His being, to be present for me.