WAR AND PEACE- A SAVIOR IS BORN

 

 

WARTIME CHRISTMAS

Led by a star, a golden star,
The youngest star, an olden star,
Here the kings and the shepherds are,
A kneeling on the ground.
What did they come to the inn to see?
God in the Highest, and this is He,
A baby asleep on His mother’s knee
And with her kisses crowned.  

Now is the earth a dreary place,
A troubled place, a weary place.
Peace has hidden her lovely face
And turned in tears away.
Yet the sun, through the war-cloud, sees
Babies asleep on their mother’s knees.
While there are love and home—and these—
There shall be Christmas Day.    ~ Joyce Kilmer (d.1918)

In a 2024 Nativity scene, by the Ukrainian artist Natalya  Rusetska,  the manger in Bethlehem has become the planet earth, in which the struggle between good and evil is depicted as war between heaven and earth, with the birth of the Savior in the middle.

She says of her work: My art is about the eternal, the timeless, the extraterrestrial, the hidden. One of the inherent features of sacred art is symbolism. This is a figurative creation that reveals the inner essence of the depicted. Sacred art affects and changes the spiritual state of the human.

Born in 1984 she studied at the Lviv National Academy of Arts (department of sacred art). Lives and works in Lviv. Engaged in modern sacred art.Since 2019, she has been working at the Andrey Sheptytsky National Museum in Lviv. Her works are in private collections in Ukraine, Poland, Italy, Canada, and USA.