Precious Flow

“Oh, precious is the flow
that makes me white as snow.”

That lyric from Nothing but the Blood of Jesus became the foundation for Precious Flow, the eighth and final painting in my Divine Maps collection.

I began this series trying to understand what it meant to recognize divine presence in my own life. By the time I arrived at this final painting, the question had shifted because in this return journey to faith God had met me, held me, and transformed me, and I was left to wonder where to go from here, having been cared for, loved, and provided for by God every step of this collection.

At the center of the painting, anointing oil pours from a conch shell and forms a chrysalis. From it, a blue morpho butterfly precariously emerges, newly transformed but not yet safely in flight. I wanted to capture that vulnerable space between being prepared for something and actually stepping into it: the moment when a calling can feel both precious and terrifying.

The anointing oil became my image of being commissioned. It is what forms the chrysalis, sustains the transformation, and continues to flow even as the butterfly leaves it behind. That abundance is important. The butterfly emerges from something that has already been poured over it.

Behind it stretches an unfamiliar blue landscape, an allusion to the visual world I am beginning to explore next. The horizon is open, but the destination is unresolved. I wanted the final painting in Divine Maps to end there, with movement toward what has not yet been revealed.

Precious Flow is the culmination of a collection about my return to faith, but it is also the threshold into what comes after. If the earlier paintings were about learning to recognize divine presence, this final one is about trusting that presence enough to move forward.

The butterfly has made it out of the chrysalis.

Now it has to fly.