Psalm 126

ARTIST STATEMENT: KATIE CALVERT
The six verses of Psalm 126 have been a part of my personal
journey for several years. There is such beauty and mystery in
the lines “those who sow in tears shall reap in songs of joy.”
While at first they sounded like a far off echo, I would later
come to feel these lines wrap protectively around my heart, like
glittering threads of hope as I wept in particularly hard
seasons. I have also heard their prophetic cry as I have borne
witness to difficult seasons in the lives of others.
A few years ago when I found myself in a particularly hard
season, I sought the help of a professional counselor. She
encouraged me to be curious about my tears rather than ashamed,
because they often fall in the doorway of a part of my story that
needs healing. Similarly, rather than hiding their tears, the
Israelites wept as they worked, letting tears fall freely on the
open fields. These lines have stirred up my imagination and
filled me with wonder about the role our sorrows play in our
work, and God’s desire for us to be authentic in our
suffering.
When I found a safe place to expose my tears, I began to see
reflections of Jesus‘ care for me in the midst of them. My tears
began to reflect much more than the sorrows that produced them. I
began to imagine our tears as multi-dimensional, like prisms,
such that when we take a closer look we see reflections of both
our heartache and His. They reflect the truth that our God weeps
with us. They remind me that He, too, let His tears fall freely
onto the ground at Gethsemane. That He experienced sorrows upon
sorrows on the earth so that He could identify with us. And,
amazingly, He is using our tears and our sowing of seeds for the
garden He’s growing, and the city He’s building, right in the
midst of our brokenness.
For some of the oil paintings in this series, I had a specific
portion of the psalm in mind, and I included specific elements
which referenced the passage. Others are based on the conceptual
ideas I explored, with the “sowing” and the “reaping” occurring
simultaneously, because we are, after all, sowing into a New
Creation that is both here and coming, and our tears are falling
even as our joy is rising.
The healing that emerged through this journey gave me the courage
to pick up paint and palette knife and “get back to work” in the
way that He has called me, and to bring this body of work into
existence as a testimony to what He has done. Creating these
paintings felt to me like I was leaning into His chest to hear
His heartbeat, and then working with my tools to interpret what I
sensed and imaged from that intimacy. I do hope that this
intimacy comes across to the viewer. Through this experience I
have also become someone who is better equipped to welcome the
tears of others. This body of work is my prayer and my vision for
an authentic community that mourns together well, who are among
“those who dream”, with the assurance that one day those dreams
will grow into a reality of a full measure of joy.