Let love be without hypocrisy. Detest evil; cling to what is good. Love one another deeply as brothers and sisters. Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lack diligence in zeal; be fervent in the Spirit; serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope; be patient in affliction; be persistent in prayer. Share with the saints in their needs; pursue hospitality.
Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud; instead, associate with the humble. Do not be wise in your own estimation. Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Give careful thought to do what is honorable in everyone’s eyes. If possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.
—Romans 12:9–18 CEB
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SONG: “Give Good Gifts One to Another” by Sister Martha Jane Anderson, 1893 | Performed by The Rose Ensemble, on And Glory Shone Around: Early American Carols, Country Dances, Southern Harmony Hymns, and Shaker Spiritual Songs (2014)
Give good gifts one to another,
Peace, joy, and comfort gladly bestow;
Harbor no ill ’gainst sister or brother,
Smooth life’s journey as you onward go.Broad as the sunshine, free as the showers,
So shed an influence, blessing to prove;
Give for the noblest of efforts your pow’rs;
Blest and be blest, is the law of love.
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Born in Limington, Maine, to a farming family, Joseph H. Davis was an itinerant artist who created small, inexpensive portraits of New England citizens from 1832 to 1837. He wandered from town to town through the border region between Maine and New Hampshire with his watercolors, paper, pencils, and brushes, initially seeking clients among his church connections. (He was a member of the Freewill Baptist Church.) His reputation spread by word of mouth, and over a five-year period he executed at least 150 watercolor portraits, most often posing together in profile a husband and wife or, as in the above painting, siblings, either in parlor settings or outdoors. The family pets are sometimes included too. Along the bottom borders he recorded the sitters’ names and ages.
After Davis’s daughter was born, he gave up painting and became involved in land speculation, manufacturing, and inventing.
Mary Antoinette Lorania Pike and Sarah Adeline Pike was part of the exhibition A Piece of Yourself: Gift Giving in Self-Taught Art, which ran from July 22, 2019, to January 10, 2020, at the American Folk Art Museum in New York City. Other pieces included quilts, handmade valentines and toys, Shaker gift drawings, a tin top hat (a tenth anniversary present), and a delicate, lacelike papercut made in 1830 by an inmate at Walnut Street Prison in Pennsylvania for a prison guard’s daughter.
This post belongs to the weekly series Artful Devotion. If you can’t view the music player in your email or RSS reader, try opening the post in your browser.
To view all the Revised Common Lectionary scripture readings for Proper 17, cycle A, click here.
Art & Theology 