Two young girls
Mr. St George Hare painted a picture that hangs in the Melbourne Art Gallery. So Frank Boreham told us in his Late Lark Singing
(175). It's a painting of two young women fast asleep with their arms
around each other's shoulders. One was a girl that God painted black and
other he had painted white. And where were they? They were in some sort
of waiting room, kept in custody until they were thrown to the lions
the next day. And how did they spend their last night on earth before
their ultimate trauma? Asleep on the straw and in their friend's arms.
St. George Hare called his painting The Victory of Faith. Vision, talent and insight don't get much better than that. Two kids defied and defeated the world!
Roman
tyranny and cruelty was noted, yawned at, and the girls went peacefully
to sleep. Racist muck was recognized for what it is when two humans
lived oblivious to it, friends together and facing the worst the girls
went to sleep in one another's arms, a young black and white girl
holding one another. Fears that must surely have been present at some
point and probably would be again before they were done were felt,
recognised, pushed aside and the girls went to a sound sleep. The
approach of Death was acknowledged ("Ah, yes, so we'll see you in the
morning? Right…but…yawn…if you don't mind…big yawn…we need to get some
sleep, it's been a while.") but there was no grovelling; in the end
Death was no more than the sleep they had now drifted into.
"What a pretty picture and what a pretty story."
No!
We can dismiss it in that way if we wish but it's more than pretty and
sweet and nice; it's world defying and world defeating. Two Christian
kids stood up and told Rome and all the powers in and behind it, "We
won't crawl and we won't back down!"
And the Rome Empire heard it, began to shake and finally shook to tiny pieces and was carried away by an eternal wind .
And
to this day stuck on a wall in some gallery is the image of two real
Christian kids from any age and any culture in the sleepy defiance that
comes by faith in the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Tyrants of the world—big and small, known and unknown—take note!