Artworks for Mormon and Ether
Our artistic journey through the Book of Mormon continues! Each month on our website, you can find artworks to accompany each of the coming month's Come, Follow Me readings. You can also subscribe to get email reminders when new artworks are ready or follow along weekly on Instagram or Facebook. We hope that art-lovers everywhere will be inspired by these artworks as they complement their gospel study, family discussions, and church classes with fine art from around the world. Here are our selected artworks for November.
October 28 - November 3
Claude Buck’s War Protest, painted near the end of World War II, explores war’s devastating power to destroy, and questions whether a war’s outcome can ever be considered a success. Perhaps this is how Mormon felt when he mourned, “And my soul was rent with anguish, because of the slain of my people.” Defeat is not always punishment for sin, but for the Nephites, Mormon believed it was. He cried, “How could ye have departed from the ways of the Lord! How could ye have rejected that Jesus…. Behold, if ye had not done this, ye would not have fallen. But behold, ye are fallen, and I mourn your loss” (Mormon 6:16-18). We may not be on the front lines of war and destruction, but we can still sometimes be weighed down by the burden of our own sins. Fortunately, the Savior stands “with open arms to receive [us]” as we cast aside those mistakes.
How does living the gospel bring peace to your life?
November 4-10
In Ernst Barlach’s sculpture, the Savior stands like a column: upright, steady, and bracing the figure leaning into him. The figure on the right is partially held up by Christ, supported in his uncertainty and hesitation, or even weakness. Perhaps this is a representation of our relationship with the Savior: he is “the same yesterday today, and forever, and in him there is no variableness neither shadow of changing” (Mormon 9:9). To find strength, we, too, must rely on the Lord.
How does the Lord’s constancy bless your life?
November 11-17
Before the Jaredites crossed the sea on barges, they traveled across the wilderness “where there never had man been.” Minerva Teichert’s painting Journey of the Jaredites Across Asia highlights how much of an undertaking this might be to travel through unknown territory with large herds. The Lord provided directions to the Promised Land, but he did not provide the entire map from the beginning. Instead, “the Lord did go before them, and did talk with them as he stood in a cloud, and gave directions whither they should travel” (Ether 2:5). Though daunting, the Jaredites were not left alone. Teichert reminds the viewer, through the cloud above and the sheep below, that we, like the Jaredites, are never truly left alone.
November 18-24
When the Jaredites finally made it aboard their barges, “they were tossed upon the waves of the sea before the [furious] wind.” Sometimes, just when we think we’ve overcome a hurdle and done what the Lord asked us to do, we are again put off balance. The instability of the winds in our lives may feel like a burden to push through or a roadblock to avoid, but for the Jaredites, “the wind did never cease to blow [them] towards the promised land.” We might feel like the man depicted above, bombarded by a barrage of attacking arrows, but with an eternal perspective, we might also see the angels allowing the arrows push us where we need to go.
