Costly mercy

I have entered a period of possibly serious ill-health (NOT coronavirus) and will not be posting much of my own artwork here for a while (although I hope to continue to draw and paint as much as I can).  So, I'm going to also write some posts about some of my favourite works of art and why they mean so much to me. Here is the first.  

Some of my comments may have a Christian flavour too them but not all, so if you don't want to read about my faith then skip that post and read another one.  Obviously with it being Easter this weekend, this post and the next one do feature some Christian content.  

My good friend John sent me this beautiful painting of The Good Samaritan by Vincent Van Gogh. This painting is so REAL compared with the many other "old master" paintings of the same thing. 

I found this on https://www.vincentvangogh.org/ :-

"On May 8, 1889, exhausted, ill, and out of control, Vincent Van Gogh committed himself to St. Paul's psychiatric asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, a small hamlet in the south of France. A former monastery, the sanatorium was located in an area of cornfields, vineyards and olive trees. There Van Gogh was allowed two small adjoining cells with barred windows. One room he used as his bedroom, and the other was his tiny studio. While there, Van Gogh not only painted the surrounding area and the interior of the asylum, he also copied paintings and drawings by other artists, making those paintings his own through modifications he made to the painting's composition, the colors and, of course, the brush strokes." 

My friend John wrote to me, "Look at the effort he has to put in to help the man. His back is bent, his arm and leg muscles are stretched to their limit. There is nothing he won't do to help the man. Is the parable more about Jesus' crucifixion than anything else?". In fact this makes me think of brave Joseph of Arimathea who went to Pilate and asked permission to take Jesus's body away - how hard that must have been for him, with the risk that he also could be accused of being one of Jesus's followers.  On the other hand it reminds me of Jesus himself who carries us through immense trials and difficulties.

Look at how in the painting, the priests who passed by on the other side are not even turning to look at what's going on behind them. Yet this Samaritan, who the Judahites of the time despised, gave his all to help this poor man who had been beaten by robbers and left to die.

Poor Vincent was a deeply troubled man but what a gift he was to us all, bringing out the beauty of the world around us and yet showing such deep feeling for the human condition in his work