Art to Life

I realize my posts lately must have made some of you think I've lost the Christmas spirit. But it is just the opposite. I'm feeling it more this year than I ever have and the old ways of expressing it just don't see adequate. But today I did something that increased all the warmth and love I am feeling for the season. I visited the Carl Bloch exhibit at the BYU art museum.

Bloch was a Danish painter who spent most of his life painting scenes from the life of Christ. Many of them you've seen because the LDS Church uses them often as illustrations for lessons and in the Church magazines. But seeing the original, often life-size paintings, is a new experience that has touched something deep within me.

I'll tell you more about it later, but my mind and heart are alive right now with the sight of Bloch's depictions of Christ--usually the source of light in the paintings. But it wasn't just the art that touched me. something more happened. It was as if that light so beautifully portrayed, came off the painting and seeped into my own soul. It startled me at first. I wasn't expecting an inanimate painting to come alive for me in such an amazing way. It is as if the light transfused hope and love into my heart to make it beat stronger.

And the feeling has not left me.