The Courage to Paint Again

In 1611, a seventeen-year-old Italian painter named Artemisia Gentileschi was assaulted by her tutor, a fellow artist her father had trusted. The trial that followed was as brutal as the crime itself — she was subjected to thumbscrews in the courtroom to test whether she was telling the truth. The whole of Rome watched and whispered.

Most people would have set down their brushes forever. Artemisia picked hers back up.

She went on to paint Judith Slaying Holofernes, a canvas so fierce and unflinching that it still stops people in their tracks four centuries later. The biblical heroine in her painting doesn't look away from the terrible thing she must do. She leans in, sleeves rolled up, gripping the sword with both hands. Artemisia painted courage not as the absence of suffering but as the refusal to let suffering have the final word.

That is the courage Scripture calls us to — not a life untouched by pain, but a life that keeps creating, keeps serving, keeps trusting God in the aftermath of what should have destroyed us. Joshua heard the Lord say, "Be strong and courageous" not because the Promised Land would be easy, but precisely because it would be hard.

Some of you are sitting in the aftermath of something that tried to silence you. God is not asking you to forget what happened. He is asking you to pick up your brush again.