Art to Heart Prayer of Petition

Pierre-Auguste Renoir: Young Girls at the Piano, The Canoeists Luncheon, and The Swing

©2002 by Jeff Dugan

Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s (pronounced “pyerr ohgoost renwahr”) paintings have a lot going for them.  The colors are masterfully combined in beautiful harmonies.  The balance of light and dark and the structured compositions add a sense of stability and balance.  And the impressionist brushwork bathes these happy scenes in an atmosphere of dreamy tranquility.

It’s not hard to accept these artistic merits intellectually, but to fully appreciate Renoir’s magic, you may need to go beyond what you know in your head, and set your heart loose to play like a child in the sunshine that glows within the paintings.  Is that hard for you?  Has the seriousness of religion (and it is serious) taught you to mistrust pure delight like we mistrust food – on the grounds that “if it tastes good, it must be bad for you”?  I hope not, because the Bible makes it clear that God wants us to fully savor the joy He provides for us.  So let go for a moment, and allow your soul to bask in the serenity of Renoir’s art.

The experience may touch something deep within you – something pure and fundamental – something left over from the way life once was, in the Garden of Eden.

And if it speaks so profoundly to those of us whose comfortable lives are only seldom visited by true adversity, imagine how powerful these images of heaven on earth must charm the heart of one who knows real hardship. Imagine, for instance, what a sweet dream these would be for a man who escaped poverty in his youth only to suffer an adulthood beset with decades of physical pain; who struggled with the insecurity of a working class upbringing in a society of intellectuals; and who further saw his family torn apart by wartime injuries and the untimely deaths of his wife and infant son. 

As it happens, we don’t really need to imagine such a poor soul encountering these works of art, because the miserable life I’ve just described is that of Renoir himself.  A life full of affliction and dashed hopes…and yet you will never find a hint of that darkness in his paintings.  Instead, through the gloom, he persistently, even obsessively clung to this image of the ideal existence – this dream that we all have alive in our hearts, when we allow ourselves to dream it.

This dream is so universally present in every person, and it is so unquenchable, even despite the greatest tribulation, that it must be part of the image of God in which we are all created.  And just as God created male and female as a mated pair that is only complete with both partners, so He has also provided the answer that satisfies this deep, eternal yearning of ours.  This dream that we dream with Renoir is the one made perfect by Jesus, when he calls us to "Come to me all who all who are weary and heavy laden and I'll give you rest."

Will you pray with me?

(At this point the worship leader may offer a petition tailored to the specific circumstances, or may recite the following)

Lord, you know our world is so full of nightmares that we sometimes find it hard to dream of life the way you intended it to be.  But today, in full recognition of the troubles around us, we affirm our faith that You alone are both able and willing to restore us to that state of perfect peace and delight in You that once existed in the Garden of Eden.  And so we bring our petitions to you, dreaming our dreams with hope that You will soon bring about Your kingdom on earth as it is in Heaven.

(At this point the worship leader may insert a litany providing the congregation an opportunity to voice specific or general corporate petitions, or may prompt the congregation to make silent personal petitions.)

Amen.