Just Imagine!

“Just Imagine!” will bring you into the days of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, 2,000 years ago and thereby bring Him into our today. The inspiration for this ten year work of drawing and writing these miraculous episodes of His life came from my very own healing as God saw me dying from addiction, healed and put me back on my feet. Not many people have epiphanies, I did, and it was that encounter that brought me to do the work of His story; for no greater love, admiration and respect could ever be found than that which was and is in my heart for Him who is above all else.
Chapter One of “Just Imagine!” takes us into the trials of Jesus comparing the complete upending of the law as it is also repeated in our day. These trials were conducted secretly, without complete forums to levy the punishment; they were a sham! Our Lord Jesus Christ stood firm, noble and always obedient to His Father, He told the truth and it got Him first inhumanely scourged and ultimately crucified. The protracted tortures and demeaning shouts of unjustified hatred laid upon Him were abominable. This part of the story is researched from the Bible and many other excellent resource books and holds many similar comparisons to our law and order today, and serves as a “wake-up call” for us.
In chapter two, we walk with Jesus to Golgotha, or the place of the skull. The Fourteen Stations of the Cross are known to us and some will doubt their validity and discard them as legend, and perhaps some of these episodes are legend; but what wonderful legends they are! After Jesus was scourged, the half-death, as it was referred to, did not kill Him, He managed to walk the grueling path to the hill, where He would be cruelly stripped of all His garments, thrown to the ground and nailed with 5” spikes going through His wrists to a cross. Hoisted on the beam, He would then have His feet also nailed together and now He would hang, bleeding from the insidious crown of thorns and His wrists, gasping for every breath until He said, “It is finished.” And then bowing His head, He would die an agonizing death for you and for me as He bore every one of our sins on His back to that cross. Not one detail is left out of this writing for the details of Roman crucifixion are beyond belief within the scope of their maniacal hideousness. It is a tough read, and often while drawing and writing this chapter, I would have to stop, for I was either sick to my stomach or crying so as not to be able to see my drawing paper. There are tender moments involved in this story, but empathetically drafted of my pen and pencil, they could not heal or redeem the pure awfulness done to this Prince of Peace. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son to die for us”, and much of the writing was of the genre that how dare we, in our pseudo-sophisticated, idiotic, controlling ways come up in the face of the Lord; how can we? And it all points to our gigantic need to change our mode of living, and as God said, “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased, listen to Him!”I ask the question, are we listening to Him?
The absolute horror of this time of the Lord’s crucifixion ends with God’s divine explosion of light and power as the tomb is blasted wide open and an Angel of the Lord is sent to sit upon the stone which covered the tomb, daring all the powers in hell to move it back, and here we have chapter three; The Resurrection. This story stands alone with absolutely no valid human input as to what actually happened at this time. There simply cannot be any such information, because this episode written with all the justifying fury I could muster illustrating God’s magnificence and plan, could only be and was only in the mind of God. This resurrecting is a story of God’s great love and tears of joy will fall as the story unfolds for here is The One who is the All in All, bringing home to Himself, His dearest Son.
Transformation occurs slowly as the laity becomes aware of the recent happenings, and those closest to Jesus, seek Him in chapter four. The brilliant, surprising, affirming visits of the Lord Jesus Christ to those left behind are dealt with such great joy and love that all of the heretofore heinous happenings melt away in the light of God our loving Father through His Son. Delving deeply into the personalities of such as Mary Magdalene, St. Peter, St. John and the Blessed Mother Mary were trips of unbridled joy for me and often I needed to remind myself of my present whereabouts, because these stories are dealt with in insightful and passionate love and empathy for all who were close to the Lord. Often I felt as though I was right there with them, and for that reason I bring the reader there because we need to revisit and understand all of this; our magnificent history, and look to our own day and times and change! “Listen to Him!” indeed we must. This chapter is not without humor relating to our own very human behavior and always, always it espouses the great unfathomable love which our Creator bestows upon us every day we live. All of this book is really about love, great, great love.