There Am I in the Midst

Matthew 18:20Hallway

$24.00

Thursday comes round again and the chairs go into a circle in your front room. By the door, where people are still taking off their coats, there is a painted map of a village asleep at dusk with one roof left awake. Nobody has to be told what it is. It is the wall that says the house is the point, not the programme. Guests lean in to read it, the way you lean toward someone when you want to know what the sermon meant to them, and then they ask where it is from.

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170 gsm archival matte paper, ships rolled

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Perfect for self-framing

Framed+ $35.00

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12x16 in / 30x40 cm18x24 in / 45x60 cmMost popular+ $10.0024x32 in / 60x80 cm+ $20.00

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Study and small group bible verse wall art Matthew 18:20

One roof still awake over a sleeping village

Stand back by the stairs and the whole village is there at dusk, seen from a little above, roofs and lanes laid out like a map somebody drew by hand. The colours are muted, dusty blue and clay. One roof is gold, because the door under it is open.

Nothing in it is hurrying. You keep finding small things: a lane bending, a well in a courtyard, a lamp somebody inside has already lit. Living with it is steadying on the nights when eight people are due at seven and the kettle is not on yet.

People read it differently, which is half the pleasure of it. One friend sees a village asleep with a single roof left awake. Another sees three small marks crossing a courtyard toward a door. Someone else keeps coming back to two figures paused at the well, in no hurry to get where they are going. Each of those readings is true, and a house that hangs it is a house where that kind of talk is welcome.

From the artist

The gold roof is where the road bends

Elias Brook

Roads seen from above

I keep looking at the one gold roof. From up here the village is small, lanes folding into each other, most windows already dark, and the eye goes straight to the door that is open. It is not the biggest thing in the scene. It is only the place the road bends toward.

Then I follow the marks crossing the courtyard. Three of them, going the same way, taking their time. Somebody at the well has stopped walking altogether. I like that nobody on this map arrives in a rush. What I hope, for whoever lives with it, is that the short walk from their own front door into their own front room starts to feel like the most travelled road on the map.

Study and small group scripture print gift

The one who hosts, and the one who thanks her

One woman buys it for herself, the month she says yes to hosting. The chairs are found, the front room is ready, and the wall by the door is bare. It is as much a support group as a Bible study, she would tell you, and she wants the first thing people see to look like it knows that.

The other buys it in December, for the woman whose house it has been all year. Not another mug. I truly do not want stuff, that woman said back in the autumn, and she meant it, so this comes as one thing chosen slowly instead of five things chosen fast.

It hangs in the hallway, right of the doorway piece, at eye level where coats come off, the 45x60 cm framed size sitting easily as part of a three-piece entry wall.

Choose a size

Bible verse wall art

What arrives

170 gsm paper Matte uncoated as a print only sheet, printed to its edges. Coated silk behind the glazing in the framed one.
12 mm black wood frame Flat square profile, 22 mm deep, matte finish, plexiglass front, no mat, the picture running to the inner edge.
Three sizes 30x40, 45x60 and 60x80 cm. The 45x60 is the one that sits at eye level beside a doorway.

Before hosting night

What people ask before it goes on the wall

1.What verse is good for a room where we host bible study?

Matthew 18:20 is the one most hosts land on, because it is about people gathered in an ordinary room rather than a building or a programme. It sits well by the door, where everyone passes it on the way in and again on the way out. A scene rather than a slogan also leaves something for guests to look at while the coats come off.

2.What does where two or three are gathered mean?

The words come from Matthew 18, in the middle of a passage about how people in a community deal with one another. Christ says that where two or three come together in his name, he is there among them. This piece does not settle the meaning for you: it shows a village at dusk with one door open, and the reading stays yours to give when someone asks.

3.Where should this hang in a hallway?

At eye level on the entry wall, beside the doorway, where people stop to take their coats off. The 45x60 cm framed size holds that spot on its own and also works as the middle of a three-piece entry wall. Leave a hand's width between frames and hang them on one line rather than centred on the wall.

4.What do you give a small group leader as a thank you?

Something for the house she keeps opening, rather than another mug or another candle. Nothing, her house had enough stuff in it, is what most leaders say when asked, so one chosen piece for the wall by her front door lands differently. Say what her Thursdays have meant to you in the card, and let the picture say the rest.

Scripture print gift