Passionately Pursuing His Presence


This year we're taking inspiration from Psalm 84.

We're regularly using this image from Anneke Kaai's remarkable collection of works inspired by psalms. You can buy these as a book, along with the Message translation and the artist's explanation, entitled "The Psalms, an artists impression".

Here's her thinking behind this piece, which we have turned (with the artist's permission) into a postcard to give to the folks here at Tabernacle Baptist Church Wolverhampton.


The poet lives far away and longs to travel to Jerusalem, to the Temple, to be close to God. 
He thinks of the birds that fly around the Temple grounds, building their nests, even in the Temple pillars.
This painting shows the head of one of the pair of copper pillars at the Temple entrance. The pillar was called Boaz (cf. 1 Kings 7:15-22) and had a lily-shaped capital, decorated with a pattern of seven interwoven chains and pomegranate shapes. 
A space high up in the capital provides a nesting place for the sparrow and the swallow—they can get no closer to God. The sparrow and the swallow are important in this psalm; therefore they appear disproportionately large. 
They are well camouflaged and blend in with the building so as to live discretely close to God. 
The psalmist envies them!

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