Vermeer Skies

You may have seen the film The Girl with the Pearl Earring or – better - been fortunate enough to see some of Vermeer’s great paintings. His View of Delft is a very special classic, looking from a distance at the town where he lived. It is an idealised portrait of the town, and despite the interest of the buildings and the group of people in the foreground, the most noticeable feature of the painting is the generous amount of sky which covers almost two thirds of the canvas.

Vermeer’s Delft sky has a very special beauty, and it is somehow quintessentially Dutch. I can see a sky like that through the windows of my mother’s house at the moment. It captures something of that town and this country, but also reflects our human condition – which is what great painting and art is all about.

The sky being so prominent says that whatever our situation in life, there is more to the world than our own living conditions. If we can feel isolated in our homes during a lockdown, we can also experience that in the environment of the village, towns and cities which we have created. There is more to the world than our daily life reveals. We can call that transcendence, rising above our normal cares and concerns to a greater reality.

The Vermeer skies reveal a great beauty but they include grey clouds. They are realistic. We cannot live in perfect happiness and peace all the time. Vermeer painted in troubled times, with wars and disease very prevalent – as they still are. In his youth the town had been devastated by a munitions store exploding killing many people and leaving a huge scar on the town’s life. It wasn’t always idyllic!

For us as a human race, we have the grey cloud of Covid-19 which threatens us,  but we must never forget the wider picture of hope. Christians know that the world is permeated with sin but God’s love is so much greater. My dear Dutch mother is showing signs of our mortality but her faith is strong and the salvation which Jesus brings us means that the blue Dutch sky is the sign of hope which holds us in all things in this world and the next.

 

Romans 8.31-39  If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. 

Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written,
‘For your sake we are being killed all day long;
   we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.’
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

 

Heavenly Father, we thank you that we are always in your hands, when times are good or bad. Help us to continue to trust you though all life’s challenges and uncertainties and to see our earthly journey as part of your eternity, O loving and forgiving Creator, through the merits of our Saviour, Jesus Christ. Amen.