Picture: "Comfort O Comfort" by Lauren Wright Pittman, Anderson, South Carolina.

In a recent A Sanctified Art's series, the second week of Advent focuses on finding joy in connection. Rev. Lauren Wright Pittman created the above picture with this description:

I wanted to create an image that spoke tenderly to the viewer as this text does to the reader. “Comfort, O comfort my people” (Isaiah 40:1). When I’ve read this text before, the shepherding metaphor has only yielded masculine imagery in my mind. It makes sense with the text’s pronouns that I would imagine a masculine figure. It was also ingrained in me— through translations, biblical art, movies, children’s pageants, etc.—that shepherds were always men. I learned recently, however, that women were shepherds too. Some young women were trained and worked as shepherds before they were married; this notion completely added new dimension and depth to the shepherding metaphor. I decided to use imagery of modern-day shepherds to inspire this image. A shepherd is at once fierce and tender, willing to face the most dangerous of predators in the dead of night while warmly cradling the most vulnerable of the flock.

In this image, the shepherd nurtures a lamb while leading the flock through fields of tall grasses and flowers. The fuschia flowers in the foreground are Marjoram flowers that represent comfort and the steadfastness of God’s word even in the midst of the leveling of the land. The shepherd’s clothes have repeated medallions with simplified imagery of a straight highway in the wilderness. Within the stylized landscape, a voice proclaims the coming glory of the Lord. (A Sanctifed Art)

Photo: "Shepherd Girl of Pisac, Peru" by Keith Gandy, Aschaffenburg, Germany.

The images of the moden-day sheperds I have added here do not speak to me of danger but of joy -- the joy of being where you need to be, doing the work needed to be done, providing for others with love and care. There is an unspoken connection here between the shepherds, the animals, the photographer, and the greater world around us. Here, I believe, is where hope and abiding joy in connection can be found.