Curses
The Green Bridge by Lyonel Feininger
This painting is intriguing and sinister at the same time. We can see that we're looking under a bridge into a town or city but everything is misshapen and out of perspective. It seems to be early morning as we see a flow of people going to work. They appear to be going to work because they are leaving the town.
If the town is misshapen the people more so. They appear surreal. Only one man has a face and if you look closely he looks bewildered. The people float by one another keeping their head down and under wraps. Do they know that standing on the bridge above them is at least one man with a spear?
There is doom and gloom creeping all over this picture -- a sense that something bad is about to happen. What can we make of such a strange picture?
I think this is how a good portion of the world head into their days -- there is a sense of foreboding as if something bad will happen. They might be right for the Bible says all men are under a curse who reject God's commands and turn away to false gods (See Deuteronomy 11:28). Today this is most of our society.
A curse is like a long, dark shadow reaching out for us from behind. It hangs over us like the man on the bridge. In Deuteronomy 28:20 it says, "The Lord himself will send on you curses, confusion and frustration in everything you do, until at last you are completely destroyed for doing evil and abandoning me."
It's no wonder most of mankind walks in a state of guilt as condemned men. Is there any way out of this terrible state? Yes, but only one.
It says in Galatians 3:13 that "Christ has rescued us from the curse pronounced by the law. When he was hung on the cross, he took upon himself the curse for our wrong doing."
It is through our accepting of what Jesus has done for us on the cross that we can walk free from the curse -- from those forebodings that something terrible is about to happen.