“Divine power allows love to displace might.” -Wendy Farley, The Thirst of God: Contemplating God’s Love with Three Women Mystics

“There is a powerful connection between our emptiness and our ability to welcome. When we give up what sets us apart from others—not just property but also opinions, prejudices, judgments, and mental preoccupations—then we have room within to welcome friends as well as enemies.” —Henri Nouwen

Welcome to Day 3 of the Wonders of Worship (WOW) series. Today we ponder the Invocation and Sign of the Cross.

I return to this podcast, Thirsting for God with Wendy Farley, when needing to remember the power of Love. The whole amazing episode is 33 minutes long. The part about divine desire begins at 9:00. At 16:00, she blows me away with talk about the Trinity before creation.

Love is the power we call forth when making the sign of the cross.

To download the black and white image for personal use: on a computer, click and drag the image to your desktop; on a phone, press on the picture until it gives you the option to save it to your photos. The image is formatted to fit on an 8.5″x11″ piece of paper, but feel free to print it whatever size you’d like.

Background: I created a series of forty 5″x7″ watercolor paintings inspired by the elements of worship. It was work commissioned by a project with Nourishing Vocation with Children at St. Olaf College, a program funded through Lilly Endowment’s Nurturing Children Through Worship and Prayer Initiative.

As the paintings are shared, you may notice a pattern:

• Music = Songbird
• Prayer = Seed and/or Fruit
• Word = Leaf
• Order of Service = Element of Nature
• Season = Insect with a Flower

One final creative invitation for this project remains for me: to paint a Tree of Life holding all forty elements. I plan to share its progress here.

For this series, I am grateful to have used handmade paper from White Dragon Paper and watercolor paints from Natural Earth Paint.