the Freedom Statue

 

I don't often just blog these days...It does seem to take up lots of time I do not have  I usually just post my sermons online... but sometimes you find things just worth sharing.

 In search for images to go with a call to worship for Sunday I discovered the amazing statue by Zenos Frudakis. It is called freedom and in a statement about the work Frudakis says

 "I wanted to create a sculpture almost anyone, regardless of their background, could look at and instantly recognize that it is about the idea of struggling to break free. This sculpture is about the struggle for achievement of freedom through the creative process."

Although for me, this feeling sprang from a particular personal situation, I was conscious that it was a universal desire with almost everyone; that need to escape from some situation – be it an internal struggle or an adversarial circumstance, and to be free from it."

 elsewhere he says.

“I created the freedom sculpture because I knew the struggle to be free was not just a personal one but universal to the human condition”

One of the amazing things about the sculpture is that Frudakis invites people to stand in the statue to place themselves where they feel they are on the road to freedom.

So what verses from scripture was I using for a call to worship that lead me in a google search to find this wonderful sculpture... bucket list if I ever get to Philadelphia I must go and stand in the statue.

Jesus reading the scriptures at Capernaum in Luke 4:18-19.

‘The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
    and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,

 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.

A wonderful synergy. Thank you Zenos Frudakis for such an inspirational piece of art... you succeeded in your vision. I hope you don't mind its association with these great words and  Jesus mission of liberation.