Rock of Ages

When you look at a beautiful sunset or scenery, are you ever inspired to sing or praise God? Joni gets inspired to sing and praise God lots of different times, but she also gets inspired to go the other way! For this painting, she decided to paint because a song inspired her. As a kid, she always wondered what a “rock of ages” looked like. She knew 2 Samuel 22:2 says, “The Lord is my rock and my fort” (NIV), but she wanted to know what that looked like. When she began to paint this picture, she thought about how the Bible says God is the Ancient of Days. She wanted to paint a rock that looked ancient, like it had been there forever. She also wanted to make it look powerful. One way she did this is by making the lines in her painting go up.

How many lines do you see that start low and go high? Do you think she could have made the rock look strong and ancient if she had used more lines that went from side to side (called horizontal lines)? Pull out some pencils or crayons and try drawing different kinds of rocks using horizontal, vertical (up and down), and diagonal (starting low and going high) lines. What do you discover?

–Joni Eareckson Tada