Photo: Derbrauni licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

How do you experience repentance and renewal in your life? Join Rev. Rob McPherson as he prays with Marianne von Werefkin’s Ash Wednesday, exploring themes of humility, mortality, and God’s mercy. What is God inviting you to leave behind and what new path might God be calling you to walk?

Joel 2:12-13

In this episode of Art and Prayer, Rev. Rob McPherson invites us to reflect on Marianne von Werefkin’s painting Ash Wednesday. Rob begins by exploring the complex emotions that prayer can bring—joy, sorrow, and sometimes a deep awareness of our sinfulness and mortality. He reflects on how encountering God can make us feel small or frail in the light of divine holiness, echoing Isaiah’s words about being a person of “unclean lips” who still has seen God.

Rob introduces the historical and spiritual significance of Ash Wednesday, a day of repentance and humility where believers remember their mortality through the symbol of ashes. He encourages viewers to approach von Werefkin’s painting with these themes in mind, inviting us to look beyond the literal scene to the deeper human condition it expresses.

The painting depicts a line of colorfully dressed people walking along a path beside a leafless, icy tree, their faces downcast and contemplative. In the background, a church and solitary boats on calm waters suggest a liminal space—between leaving and returning, between winter’s cold and the hope of renewal. Rob asks what the title Ash Wednesday might mean in this context—is it a simple scene or a meditation on repentance, loneliness, and spiritual journey?

Rob reads scripture from the prophet Joel, calling people to return to God with fasting, weeping, and a torn heart rather than torn clothes. As we listen and look at the painting again, we are invited to find echoes of these words in the imagery and consider how God might be speaking to us through the art and scripture about our own paths and spiritual condition.

The episode closes with a time of prayerful reflection, inviting God’s voice into our hearts and calling us to respond to God’s leading. Rob shares the traditional United Methodist Ash Wednesday blessing as a reminder of God’s mercy and the promise of new life through repentance and grace.