Monthly Illustrated Verse

The verse represented in this month’s illustrated verse is Romans 8:38-39, which reads:
“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
This month, I was inspired by the fact that September is National Suicide Prevention Month. With this in mind, I chose to illustrate these 2 impactful verses from Romans 8. I chose a darker, more cool-toned color palette to recognize the severity of this issue and the sadness it causes. However, my main focus in connecting Romans 8:38-39 with this illustration was through the use of the symbols; I’d like to walk you through how these symbols connect with the different lines of this passage.
“Neither death nor life”
If you look to the left side of the page, there is a simple tombstone with a cross on it, which symbolizes death. On it’s right there is a simple outline of a baby; this represents life.
“Neither angels nor demons”
The image for this is pictured on the right side of the page, where a pair of wings and a pair of horns are pictured.
“Neither the present nor the future”
The pictures for this phrase warrant a bit more of an explanation. On the left side, you’ll see two worlds of slightly different sizes; the smaller one represents the present, and it shows a world focused between Asia and North America with the hands of a clock pointing to a bit past 1 o’clock. The bigger of the two worlds is the future. Its size indicates the distance between them. This world is also now completely focused between Asia and North America, and the hands of the clock have moved. This shows how time has passed in between them.
“Nor any powers”
Fourth is the statement shown above, which is represented by the strong arm and magic wand on the left side of the painting. This illustration shows that neither physical and magical power is more powerful than God.
“Neither height nor depth”
Now if you look to the right side, there are clouds high up in the sky showing height. In the same image, there is the sea with some sharks/sea creatures for depth because the ocean is referred to quite readily as the depths.
“Nor anything else in all creation”
This line was quite an illustrating challenge at first, but I ended up settling on 2 symbols. The first, is the last one on the right side, and it’s somewhat hard to read, but it has a little, etc. symbol. However, the etc. symbol is not what I want you to focus on, because I also decided to add a symbol to the left side; a mask.
This mask is also meant to represent the line, “Nor anything else in all creation”. It does this as it helps remind us that the coronavirus, or isolation, or even the feeling that no one’s there or no one understands, can’t separate us from the love of God. Finally, I’d like to leave you with this: no matter what you’re going through, God is there. He hears you. In this illustration, you are the figure walking on something as tremulous as air, but God is there and he IS holding your hand as you walk through all of it.

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