The Still Small Voice
1 Kings 19:12Study and small group
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170 gsm archival matte paper, ships rolled
Perfect for self-framing
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Ten minutes after everyone has gone home
Thursday evening ends the way it always does. The last cup goes in the sink, the chairs go back against the wall, and the room is yours for ten minutes before the lights go off.
From the circle the plain is wide and pale, the ground broken up close and softening as it goes out. One small figure stands at the mouth of the cave, turned toward the light, not moving. Whatever came through has come through and gone. Nothing is asked of anyone in it, and that is what you keep coming back for.
People read it differently. One woman in the study sees a plain after the storm has passed over it. Another sees someone waiting at a cave mouth, in no hurry to come out. Your husband says it is first light on hard ground with nothing asked yet, and he likes it best that way. Without a single slogan, it says what kind of home this is.
The light finds the cave mouth first
I keep going back to the light along the ground. It comes in low from the left and finds the cave mouth before it finds anything else, and the figure standing there seems to hold a little of it. The plain behind is still warm from whatever passed over it. Nothing moves. The stones are sharp close up and soften toward the far edge.
What I keep looking at is how much room there is around that one small shape. No one is coming for her yet. My hope is simple: that whoever hangs this has a few minutes at the end of a long evening when nothing in the room needs anything from her, and this is the thing she looks at.
Two women buy this one
One buys it for herself, in the week she finally says out loud that she has had enough of the programme. Nobody handed her a harder push. Someone pointed her to Elijah lying down and sleeping under the broom tree, and something in her let go.
The other buys it for a friend stepping back from ministry for a year. She knows the friend will say she does not want more stuff, that her house has enough in it already, so she gives something that only takes up wall. In the card she writes that he will not forget her work, or the love she has shown.
It hangs above the desk where the study is prepared, or on the wall the small group faces from the circle of chairs, most often the 45x60 cm framed.
What arrives, and what it is made of
- 170 gsm paper Matte uncoated as a print only sheet, coated silk inside the frame. No shine under a desk lamp.
- Black wood frame, 12 mm A flat square profile 12 mm wide and 22 mm deep, matte, plexiglass front, no mat, the print running to the inner edge.
- Three sizes 30x40 cm, 45x60 cm and 60x80 cm. The middle one reads from the far side of a circle of chairs.
Questions about the cave and the plain
1.What does the still small voice in 1 Kings 19 mean?
2.Where in the Bible is Elijah under the broom tree?
3.What do you give someone who is stepping back from ministry?
4.What size print fits above a desk in a study?
5.Why does the figure in the painting have no face?
The wall the chairs face
Three sizes, framed in black wood or as a print only sheet, for the corner where you actually sit and read.
