Cursten Branden Lewis

Understanding Affliction in Lamentations: A Deep Dive

Featured image: Peter Paul Rubens – The Fall of Phaeton, c. 1604-1605. Oil on canvas, 98.4 x 131.2 cm (38.7 x 51.6 in). The National Gallery of Art. Image via Creative Commons

[a]I am the man who has seen affliction
    by the rod of the Lord’s wrath.
 He has driven me away and made me walk
    in darkness rather than light;
 indeed, he has turned his hand against me
    again and again, all day long.

 He has made my skin and my flesh grow old
    and has broken my bones.

Lamentations 3: 1-4

The Hall of Justice

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Jacopo Tintoretto (c 1518-1594), The Entombment (E&I 313) (1592-94), oil on canvas, 288 x 166 cm, Church of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice, Italy. Wikimedia Commons.

What is Within the Fiery Altar?

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Jacopo Tintoretto (c 1518-1594), Dream of Saint Mark (Pax Tibi Marce) (E&I 305) (c 1591), oil on canvas, dimensions not known, Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice, Italy. Image by Didier Descouens, via Wikimedia Commons.

My Deific Instruction

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Frans Francken the Younger (1581–1642), Mankind’s Eternal Dilemma – The Choice Between Virtue and Vice (1633), oil on panel, 142 x 210.8 cm, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Boston, MA. Wikimedia Commons.

The War of Ancients

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Jacopo Tintoretto (c 1518-1594), The Last Supper (E&I 310) (1592-94), media and dimensions not known, Duomo, Lucca, Italy. Image by Mongolo1984, via Wikimedia Commons.

Arte e Spiritualità: Sant’Antonio Abate

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Frans Francken the Younger (1581–1642), Mankind’s Eternal Dilemma – The Choice Between Virtue and Vice (1633), oil on panel, 142 x 210.8 cm, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Boston, MA. Wikimedia Commons.

The Wisdom of Understanding

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Jacopo Tintoretto (c 1518-1594), The Last Supper (E&I 309) (1592-94), oil on canvas, 365 x 568 cm, Church of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice, Italy. Wikimedia Commons.

Those blind to the truth, and those who can see are not the same, nor are the darkness and the light similar. The blazing heat and the cool shade, nor the dead and the living the same. Indeed God alone makes whoever I will hear, but you, my servant can never make those in the graves hear your call. My servants are only a warning. I have surely sent them with the truth, as deliverers of good news and warnings. There is no community that has not had a warner, if they deny you so did those before them. Their messengers came to them with clear evidence, divine inscriptions, and in the enlightening books, then I seized those who persisted in disbelief how severe was my response.

They swore by God, their most solemn oaths, that if a warner were to come to them, they would certainly be better guided than any other congregation. Yet, when a warner did emerge among them, it only drove them further away, behaving arrogantly in the territory and manifesting perversion. But the manifestation of perversion only backfires on those who are perverse. Are they awaiting anything but the fate of those destroyed before you? You will find no change in the way of God, nor will you divert to someone else; have they not traveled throughout the land to see what was the end of those destroyed before them? They were far superior in might, but there’s nothing that can escape God- in the heavens or the earth. I am certainly All Knowing, Most Capable. If God were to punish people immediately for what they have manifested, I would not have left a single living being on earth, but I delay them for an appointed term and when their time arrives, surely God is All Seeing of my servants.

Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?  How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?  You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

Matthew 7: 3-5

La Omnipotencia

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The Paradise by the Italian Renaissance painter Tintoretto (1518-1594 CE), commissioned for the Doge’s Palace n Venice. Completed 1588 CE.

Llamamiento de Realidad

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Hans Memling (c 1433–1494), The Last Judgment (panel from triptych) (1467-1471), oil on panel, 223 x 72 cm, Muzeum Narodowe w Gdańsku, Gdańsk. Wikimedia Commons.

The Eternal Truths: Insights from Scripture

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Jacopo Tintoretto (c 1518-1594), The Archangel Michael in Combat with Lucifer (E&I 287) (1580s or early 1590s), oil on canvas, 318 x 220 cm, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Dresden, Germany. Wikimedia Commons.

The Great Deceiver

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Featured image: Peter Paul Rubens – The Fall of Phaeton, c. 1604-1605. Oil on canvas, 98.4 x 131.2 cm (38.7 x 51.6 in). The National Gallery of Art. Image via Creative Commons

Preparing to Conquest

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Unrecorded artist, Virgin of The Rosary of Pomata, c. 1730–60, oil on canvas with gold leaf applications (Pedro y Angélica de Osma Foundation)
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