I am currently reading — or more accurately listening to — Barack Obama’s book ‘The Promised Land’. Early in this book he mentions the inspiration of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s talk entitled ’The Audacity To Hope’. Obama himself wrote a book ‘The Audacity To Hope’, and intrigued by this, it seemed worth looking into. The Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. describes George Frederic Watts's 1886 painting "Hope" in his sermon, "The Audacity to Hope." Here is a short extract ... We think of being on top of the world as being in heaven. But when you look closely, all in fact is hell. The harpist is sitting there in rags. Her clothes are tattered as though she, herself, had been a victim of Hiroshima or Sharpeville. … Yet the artist dared to entitle this painting ‘Hope’. We must realise the frontiers of death, that there is no more chance of our entering the life of God than a mineral has of entering the vegetable kingdom, we can only enter into the Kingdom of God if God will stoop down and lift us up. That is exactly what Jesus Christ promises to do. |
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GEORGE and GILL STEWART |