"Unless the Lord"- the finished painting

So, here's the finished painting and my heart behind it:

This was such a rich process for me.  Finding more and more how much I enjoy collaborating with kindred hearts for the common good. Thankful Adam Wright invited me to be a part of the conversation. My heart really NEEDED Psalm 127.

"Unless the Lord" 36x36

Soaking in the truths of psalm 127 for Birmingham and my own heart inspired this piece titled "unless the lord."

So much of the vision for this piece has been fueled by having my imagination stirred as I sit with a small faithful group of friends and pray every Saturday morning for God to bring revival to Birmingham and rename her despite her scars.

As the founder of InSpero Birmingham, I deeply believe God is using the creatives (risk takers, visionaries, dreamers, pastors, artists and makers) 

in our city to bring restoration and renewal toward that end that she would be renamed "the city beautiful."

As I hope and dream for inspero Birmingham and how the faithful work of creatives and artists can impact our city for good- this project has lifted my heart- and reminded me God is big and I am small.

Unless the Lord builds the city we labor in vain.

Jesus holds me and Jesus holds the city.

Adam's heart behind the show:

"My name is Adam Wright and I wanted to take a moment to invite you to VIBRANT, a music and arts festival that will be taking place THIS SUNDAY afternoon, November 1 at 3 PM at the Carraway-Davie House.  This event is a celebration of the Psalms through music and art and will be a truly unique experience.  I'd like to share with you a little more about how the event came to be.

I have been leading the music at Cahaba Park Church since 2010.  During the summer of 2014, our senior pastor Murray Lee began a 16-week series on the Psalms, preaching one Psalm a week.  Seeking to thematically plan worship around the Psalms, I sat down to try to set Psalm 1 (the first of the series) to music, word for word out of the ESV Bible.  Surprisingly, but successfully, I managed to finish the arrangement in time for worship the following Sunday.  So, I devoted time to writing more.  By the end of the summer, I had 13 arrangements of complete Psalms set to music.  These "Psalm Songs" not only impacted people in our congregation, but had a profound impact on my relationship with God and memorization of Scripture.  This past summer, Murray preached another set of Psalms and by July, I had over 20 Psalms set to music.  I decided to begin recording them and gradually release a few this year.  There are currently 5 Psalms available, BUT our first volume of 10 Psalm Songs will be available in December.  

During the recording process, I also became fascinated by the intersection of Scripture, music and art.  I filmed two Birmingham artists, Wellon Bridgers and Gina Hurry, each doing a time lapse of an original piece based on one of the Psalms we had recorded.  This launched the idea to hold an art event that would feature 8 local artists, their original compositions (based on Psalms) and the Psalm Songs I'd written the past two summers."