There is a lot going on. The pandemic isn't slowing down. We are all getting very tired, but our work continues.

This week I tried something new to perhaps contribute to a less color-prejudiced world. I'm not sure if it worked or not, you'll have to let me know.

I wanted to do something to encourage everyone with God's Word. We sometimes forget that the Apostle Paul was persecuted in large measure because he associated with people who weren't Jews. Contemporary prejudice is nothing new. In his day, he was beaten and imprisoned for associating with the "wrong" people and even suggesting that there was equality before God. That persecution was a constant in his life and so when you read his words in Romans 8 and trust in God, remember what he faced.

You can use the files below in social media, print, make up postcards and send them out, however you'd like

But I didn't want to simply repeat his words, I wanted to try something new in illustrations I share with you. In many churches it is a challenge to represent all God's people. Much church artwork is too white; and some that aren't look forced, for example, five different racial groups in one small group setting or website banner. Forgive my cynicism.

In addition, almost all people are young, thin, and healthy. Where do they get these people I often wonder because nobody at my church looks like them. I digress, but wonder what if we only used pictures of the real people at our church?

A possible solution—posturize!

Below are some images in the current Media Made for You collection I did on encouragements from Romans 8. They are all in greyscale and started out looking very different than the final images.

I hope next week to get done a video showing you how I created these images. I'm still working on the school project and this is part of it. Without a tutorial, what I did with the images of people (and not using recognizable full-faces), is I took each one and then posturized them in greyscale. What this does is blur out any skin color and you simply have highlights and shadows. Here is what I came up with:

I also did a video on the series of verses with me reading them to you. It follows. Below the video are links for your files of the images to use however you'd like. For the ZIP files, download, save and unzip the files to use however you want. Just download and use the PDFS.

JPG Images Romans 8: JPG Meditation on Romans 8

INSTAGRAM Images Romans 8: INSTAGRAM Romans 8

FACEBOOK Images Romans 8: FACEBOOK Romans 8

PINTEREST Images Romans 8: PINTEREST Romans 8

MS Publisher and PDF Images Romans 8: MS PUBLISHER & PDF FILES Romans 8

POWERPOINT size PDFs Romans 8: POWERPOINT Romans 8