The 100 Faces of Jesus, An Inspirational Guide to a Christian Existence. Coming 2027

Epilogue

One Hundred Faces, One Savior

When I first heard the words “Paint Jesus” late one night in April of 2023, I had no idea where they

would lead.

I had been painting for more than two decades. I had painted landscapes, portraits, florals, abstracts,

and countless subjects that had captured my imagination. Yet in all those years, I had never painted

Jesus.

Perhaps part of me believed the subject was simply too great.

How do you paint the face of the One whom millions call Savior?

How do you capture in paint the compassion of the One who touched the untouchable, the sorrow of

the One who wept, the authority of the One who calmed the sea, or the love of the One who willingly

went to the cross?

I didn’t know.

But the next day, I began.

I could not have imagined then that one painting would become another, and another, until

eventually there would be one hundred. I could not have imagined the people who would stand before

them, the conversations they would inspire, the tears I would witness, or the stories people would share

with me.

Most of all, I could not have imagined what would happen within me.

I began this journey believing I was going to paint the face of Jesus.

Looking back now, I realize something very different was happening.

While I was painting the face of Christ, Christ was working on my heart.

The Face I Could Never Fully Paint

After one hundred paintings, I have come to understand something that perhaps I should have

known from the beginning:

I cannot paint Jesus completely.

No artist can.I could paint one hundred more faces and still only begin to explore the depth of who He is.

There is no single expression that can contain Him.

There is the Jesus who welcomed children and the Jesus who confronted hypocrisy. There is the

Jesus who touched the leper and the Jesus who overturned the tables of the money changers. There is

the Jesus who wept beside the tomb of Lazarus and the Jesus who commanded Lazarus to come forth.

There is the teacher.

The healer.

The servant.

The shepherd.

The Lamb.

The King.

There is the suffering Christ carrying the cross, and there is the risen Christ who conquered death.

There is tenderness and authority.

Sorrow and joy.

Humanity and divinity.

Justice and mercy.

Sacrifice and victory.

I tried to encounter something different in each painting. Sometimes it was His compassion.

Sometimes His strength. Sometimes His loneliness, His sorrow, His humanity, or His divine authority.

There were times when I painted His eyes and wondered what those eyes would see if He were

standing before me.

Would He see the artist?

The husband?

The father?

The grandfather?

The businessman?

The inventor?

The teacher?

Or would He look beyond every title I have ever carried and see simply the man beneath them all?

That became one of the unexpected questions of this journey.

The more I painted Jesus, the more I found myself examining myself.The Canvas Became a Mirror

Painting has always required observation.

An artist learns to look carefully. We study light, shadow, color, proportion, expression, movement,

and form. We notice things other people may pass without seeing.

But painting Jesus demanded another kind of observation.

It required me to look inward.

When I painted compassion, I had to ask whether I was compassionate.

When I painted forgiveness, I had to consider whether there were people I still needed to forgive.

When I painted humility, I had to examine my own pride.

When I painted obedience, I had to ask whether I was truly willing to follow God when His direction

differed from mine.

When I painted suffering, I thought about the burdens we carry and how easily we can forget that

Christ understands suffering far beyond our own.

When I painted His eyes filled with sorrow, I wondered how often my own choices had contributed

to the sorrow He carried to the cross.

And when I painted His hands extended in mercy, I was reminded again and again that those were

the same hands that would be pierced for me.

At some point, the canvas stopped being merely a surface upon which I was placing paint.

It became a mirror.

I was painting Jesus, but I was also being confronted with the question every Christian eventually

must answer:

If I say that I follow Christ, how much of Christ can be seen in me?

That question has stayed with me.

More Than an Artist

This journey changed the way I think about being an artist.

For many years, I thought primarily about creating a successful painting. Composition mattered.

Color mattered. Technique mattered. Brushwork mattered. I wanted the painting to work visually and

emotionally.Those things still matter to me.

But The 100 Faces of Jesus taught me that art can have another purpose.

A painting can become an invitation.

It can cause someone to stop.

To remember.

To question.

To feel.

And sometimes, to pray.

I have watched people stand silently before these paintings. I have listened as strangers shared

deeply personal stories about faith, loss, grief, hope, illness, family, and prayer. I have seen people

respond to a particular face of Jesus in ways I could never have planned when I first touched brush to

canvas.

Those moments taught me something important.

The artist does not always know where the work will go.

We create it, but once it leaves our hands, it begins another journey.

Perhaps someone sees a painting at exactly the moment they need to see it.

Perhaps an expression of Christ reminds them they are not alone.

Perhaps a person who has not prayed in years pauses long enough to whisper a prayer.

Perhaps someone who has wandered from faith remembers the Savior they once knew.

I may never know.

And I have learned that I don’t need to know.

My responsibility was to paint.

God can decide where the paintings go from there.

One Hundred Lessons in Surrender

There were moments throughout this project when I knew exactly what I wanted to paint.

There were other times when I did not.

There were paintings that seemed to emerge naturally and others that resisted me. There were faces I

changed repeatedly because something about them did not feel complete. There were times I questioned

whether I could continue finding new ways to portray the same man.But that was part of the lesson.

This project was never really about finding one hundred different faces.

It was about discovering that there are endless ways to encounter the same Christ.

Every painting required a certain surrender.

I had to surrender the expectation that every canvas would turn out exactly as I imagined.

I had to surrender perfection.

I had to surrender control.

And increasingly, I had to surrender myself.

That may be the greatest lesson these paintings have taught me.

Faith is not simply believing that God exists.

Faith is trusting Him enough to place your life in His hands.

Jesus did not say, “Admire Me.”

He said:

“Follow Me.”

Those are very different things.

It is possible to admire Jesus from a distance.

It is possible to appreciate His teachings, admire His compassion, celebrate His miracles, display

His image, and even speak His name without surrendering our lives to Him.

Following requires something more.

It requires us to move.

To change.

To forgive.

To serve.

To love.

To repent.

To trust.

To surrender.

And sometimes to step forward without knowing exactly where the road will lead.

I understand that better today than I did when this journey began.The Hundredth Painting Was Not the End

There was a tremendous sense of accomplishment when I completed the one-hundredth painting.

One hundred canvases.

One hundred interpretations.

One hundred encounters with the face of Christ.

Yet strangely, I did not feel that I had reached an ending.

Instead, I felt as though I had arrived at another beginning.

Because how could one hundred paintings exhaust the story of Jesus?

How could one hundred faces capture the infinite character of Christ?

They cannot.

The paintings may have reached one hundred, but the journey did not stop there.

Neither does our journey with Christ.

There is always more to learn.

More to surrender.

More to understand.

More to forgive.

More to give.

More to love.

And more of ourselves to place into His hands.

Perhaps that is why this book cannot truly end with the hundredth face.

The final face is not the conclusion.

It is an invitation.

The Face Beyond the Paint

If you have traveled through these pages with me, you have now encountered one hundred artistic

interpretations of Jesus.

You have seen joy and sorrow.

Strength and gentleness.

The manger and the cross.

The teacher and the servant.The Lamb and the King.

You have read Scripture.

You have considered devotions.

You have reflected.

You have prayed.

You have encountered poetry and paint.

But none of these things—not my paintings, not my words, not my prayers, and not this book—are

the destination.

They are only signposts.

They point beyond themselves.

They point toward Him.

My greatest hope is not that you finish this book thinking more highly of my paintings.

My hope is that you finish it thinking more deeply about Jesus.

Perhaps somewhere among these one hundred faces you encountered one that made you stop.

Perhaps there was an expression that seemed to speak directly into something happening in your

life.

Perhaps a Scripture reminded you of something you had forgotten.

Perhaps a prayer gave words to something you had been unable to express.

Perhaps one of these faces caused you to wonder what it would be like to stand before Jesus yourself.

If so, then the paintings have accomplished something far greater than anything I could have

achieved through technique alone.

Because ultimately, this project was never about one hundred paintings.

It was about one Savior.

And So I Continue

I am different from the man who first picked up his brush after hearing those two words in the night.

Not because I now have all the answers.

I don’t.If anything, this journey has made me more aware of how much I still have to learn about Christ,

about faith, and about myself.

But I know this:

God can take the gifts He has placed within us and use them in ways we never anticipated.

For me, that gift happened to be a paintbrush.

For someone else, it may be music, teaching, building, writing, caring for children, serving the sick,

running a business, encouraging a stranger, or simply being present for someone who is hurting.

The gift is different for each of us.

The question is what we do with it.

I once thought my journey into art began when I picked up a paintbrush at the age of fifty.

Today, I wonder whether all the roads before that moment were preparing me for something I could

not yet see.

And I wonder the same about that night in April 2023.

Two words awakened me:

“Paint Jesus.”

I obeyed as best I knew how.

One painting became ten.

Ten became fifty.

Fifty became one hundred.

And somewhere along the way, I discovered that the paintings were changing the painter.

The face I was trying to capture was teaching me about compassion.

About humility.

About courage.

About forgiveness.

About sacrifice.

About obedience.

About grace.

About love.

And above all, about the extraordinary gift of salvation made possible through Jesus Christ.So I close this book with gratitude.

Gratitude for the gift of art.

Gratitude for every person who stood before these paintings.

Gratitude for every person who encouraged this journey.

Gratitude for every lesson learned at the easel.

And gratitude to Jesus Christ, whose face I attempted to paint one hundred times while knowing that

no painting could ever contain the fullness of who He is.

I began with a blank canvas.

I began with two words.

I began believing I was being asked to paint Jesus.

Now, after one hundred faces, I understand something I could not have understood at the beginning:

I was painting His face.

But all along, He was working on my heart.

And perhaps that is where the real portrait was being created.

Not on canvas.

But within me.

One hundred faces.

One Savior.

And the journey continues.