Sharing some pages from Mark

Our pastor is working through a sermon series on Mark at the moment. I thought I'd share a few pages I've created during this series.
They're all watercolour pencils and black Micron pens - nothing too complicated, as I mostly journalled them during the sermons.
If you want to listen to any of Pastor Tony's sermons, click here (you can also listen to a couple of my sermons too, if you're interested.

Mark 1:10-11 - The baptism of Jesus

Mark 2:23-38 - The Lord of the sabbath

Mark 6:31-32 - Get some rest

Mark 21:9-10 - What do you have?

Mark 5:21-43 - Jesus heals the bleeding woman

A large crowd followed and pressed round him. And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, ‘If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.’ Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.
At once Jesus realised that power had gone out from him. He turned round in the crowd and asked, ‘Who touched my clothes?’
‘You see the people crowding against you,’ his disciples answered, ‘and yet you can ask, “Who touched me?”’
But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. He said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.’

 - Mark 5:24b-34

I used my own hand as the model for the picture. I could have copied images from the internet, but I wanted to make this personal. I need healing from certain things just as much as that woman did, so I need to reach out to Jesus too.

Other pictures I've seen of this verse show the woman holding on to Jesus' robe, but the passage doesn't say she grabbed Him, just that she touched the edge of His clothes. I imagine that the crowd was so busy that she couldn't get close enough to grab hold of anything. Her faith was so strong that she didn't feel she needed to get any closer than just a touch to be healed.

Digressing slightly, there is a danger of reading this passage and falling into the trap of thinking that anyone will be healed if their faith is strong enough, or conversely, that people who aren't healed don't believe enough. I think this is a dangerous theology to hold. Sometimes people aren't healed for reasons that God only knows. Sometimes this can lead to much greater things - look at the ministry of Joni Eareckson Tada if you want an example of this. (An excellent interview with Joni is here - I highly recommend reading it.)

In the margin of the Bible page I picked out some key phrases from the passage and wrote them out, underlining them in the text as well.

I used my watercolour pencils for the image, and the lettering was done with Pitt Artist pens.

Mark 4:21-25 - Let the light shine

A lamp on a stand
He said to them, ‘Do you bring in a lamp to put it under a bowl or a bed? Instead, don’t you put it on its stand? For whatever is hidden is meant to be disclosed, and whatever is concealed is meant to be brought out into the open. If anyone has ears to hear, let them hear.’
‘Consider carefully what you hear,’ he continued. ‘With the measure you use, it will be measured to you – and even more. Whoever has will be given more; whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.’

- Mark 4:21-25

We're working through a sermon series on Mark at church at the moment, which I'm really enjoying. It's great to get more insight into what Jesus did and the context and reasons for that.

This passage appears in the middle of a series of parables, and is Jesus telling his listeners to pay attention to what they're being told, and to understand the meanings. It's been a theme as we're going through Mark that Jesus has to explain things to His disciples because they don't understand what He means.

We don't have the luxury of grabbing Jesus in person and sitting Him down to explain things to us, but we can study the Bible, read what He told other people, and spend time in prayer to get to know what He really means more. One of the things I love about Bible art journalling is that I get to spend more time sitting and reading and thinking about passages than I would if I was just reading a passage and moving on to other things. I love to find out the stories behind the stories - the context and setting for certain parables, the history of what was happening around Jesus and the disciples at the time, and how everything fits in with the rest of the Bible.

I got my inspiration from a series of templates Monica Bauer produced. I loved the stained glass effect and thought I'd give it a go. I'm not 100% satisfied with the art, but I'm happy with the overall message. The crux of the passage, to me, was 'let your light shine' - your light, in this case, being God's glory reflected through us. I know that's not the precise meaning of the passage, but it's what I got out of it. I used the image of a lamp on a tall stand, where it could be seen, and added the text above.

On a side note, looking back over my hand lettering over the last year, I'm very pleased with how much it's improved with practice!

I used a combination of Pitt Artist Pens and watercolour pencils to colour the image. I have to admit I was a bit disappointed with the markers on this image. I'm used to getting shadowing with the pens, but find it doesn't shadow so much if I use the pens over the watercolour. However... I was quite surprised to see that the yellow pen I used for the writing shadowed really badly. I managed to cover it, but it was unexpected.

Mark 8:11-21 - Half full or half empty?

The Pharisees came and began to question Jesus. To test him, they asked him for a sign from heaven. He sighed deeply and said, “Why does this generation ask for a sign? Truly I tell you, no sign will be given to it.” Then he left them, got back into the boat and crossed to the other side.

The Yeast of the Pharisees and Herod
The disciples had forgotten to bring bread, except for one loaf they had with them in the boat. “Be careful,” Jesus warned them. “Watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and that of Herod.”
They discussed this with one another and said, “It is because we have no bread.”
Aware of their discussion, Jesus asked them: “Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not see or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear? And don’t you remember? When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?”
“Twelve,” they replied.
“And when I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?”
They answered, “Seven.”
He said to them, “Do you still not understand?”

- Mark 8:11-21

Our new pastor Tony preached on this passage a few weeks ago and it really stuck with me, so I wanted to journal something. He started by asking 'is the glass half full or half empty?' (Personally I've always thought it depends on whether you're in the process of filling it or emptying it.) He went on to talk about how the disciples were so fixated on what they didn't have - bread - that they assumed everything must be to do with that. Jesus was actually talking about something completely different.

He goes on to remind them about how the bread was multiplied when He fed the thousands of people. Why should the disciples worry about not having bread when they were with a man who could do that?!

Tony finished by reminding us not to worry about the things we don't have, especially if they're things we don't need, as that can distract us and take over our thoughts; but to concentrate on what we do have.

For the journalling it was a very simple entry but I wanted to do something to remind myself of the sermon. I sketched a half full glass of water in coloured pencils and then added the text. I coloured the page with a blue pencil, leaving the passage above white. I'll probably add some notes to myself underneath at some point, but that was all I needed to do.