soul
collection
This collection was inspired by the Biblical story of the Samaritan woman’s life-changing encounter with Jesus. Through the objects in this collection, I hope to connect her story to the experiences and struggles that so many people face today. At the same time, I aim to reveal the divine and human nature of who Jesus is, what He has done, and how He has forever changed the lives of many. Each piece speaks to a term that will express the Samaritan woman’s story.
These terms are:
bond•age
dry•ness
de•pend•en•cy
These pieces are dedicated to everything that Jesus did on the cross so that the world might experience spiritual freedom and eternal life.
There are so many people in bondage yet they are not aware of it. This type of bondage isn’t anything that you can see with your eyes or anything that you can experience in the physical. It is spiritual bondage.
In the Bible, within the book of John, the Samaritan woman met Jesus at a well. She was unaware that she was in the spiritual state of bondage. In the physical, she was bound because she not only was a woman but she was also a Samaritan. There was a constant race war between the Jews and the Samaritans because the Jews viewed them as “half-breeds”. So no matter how much she claimed to worship their God, or how much she claimed to be a Jew, or how much she followed all the laws and commandments of God, she was never enough. She thought that doing good deeds and following God's law could secure her a spot in heaven. But all that she did just wasn't enough. In the physical, she was bound by race and gender but in the spiritual, she was secretly bounded by sin. It is against the law of God to be involved with fornication outside of marriage, yet this woman had six different sexual relationships with men who weren’t her husbands. The Samaritan woman knew she was in bondage yet she didn’t realize how bad her bondage was. She was using those relationships to fill a spiritual void. Yet those relationships couldn’t bring peace and freedom, in fact, they only added to the bondage that she was already in.
Every day, the Samaritan woman went to a well to fetch water. Externally, she was thirsty, but internally, her soul was thirsty. She was searching for a natural solution to fill her spiritual thirst.
One day as she was walking to the well she saw Jesus there, who brought it to her attention that she was in a dry state; she was spiritually dry. He made her realize that she was looking for water in the wrong places. She was looking for water from the well. She was looking for water from religion. She was looking for water from those men with whom she was sleeping with. She had to keep coming back to those "wells" in her life day after day because she was never satisfied. She was always thirsty. She was always dry.
She was depending on the water to fill her thirst. She was depending on religion to be accepted by God, thinking that her good deeds would save her. She was depending on those relationships to make her happy. Yet, she was depending on the wrong source. As she was talking to Jesus, she told him that she believed that one day the Messiah would come to save her from her bondage. However, she didn’t realize that she was talking to that very person, the Messiah Himself. She didn’t know that she was talking to Jesus, the One who came to die for her sins so that she could experience spiritual freedom and eternal life. She had to humble herself. She had to deny what she thought was right. She had to deny what made her happy. She had to deny what she was dependent on. She realized that the water, religion, and men couldn't satisfy her spiritual emptiness. The only thing that could have satisfied her thirsty soul was Jesus, the Savior of the world.
So many people are in a similar situation to that of the Samaritan woman. Deep down within they are aware they have an issue, but they are trying to find physical situations to fill a spiritual void. There are females who go into prostitution because they are in search of a father that they never had. There are people who can't leave toxic relationships because that person was the only one that showed them some kind of love and affection. People are bound by addictions that they can't stop because it's the only thing that helps them to cope. In every person's life, there is some form of bondage. No matter how big or small, we all have something that we are using to fill a void. But there’s Someone who came to fill that spiritual void. Jesus was sent to set the captives free. He came to break that spiritual bondage.
God's original plan for humankind was for us to live forever in perfection. He created us to have dominion over the Earth while living in constant communion with Him. The first man on this Earth was Adam. He wasn't conceived of a woman but he came straight from God. He was the son of God. Through him, the whole world would have forever lived in God's presence. Through him, no one would die. While he and his wife Eve lived in the garden of Eden, they lived in perfection.
They had no knowledge of sin and wickedness, they had no knowledge of death, all they knew was the goodness of God. The whole world was supposed to be blessed and live forever due to their obedience. But the moment they sinned by eating the fruit, all humanity was cursed.
Through one man's sin, the whole world was cursed. Instead of getting eternal life, every human being was sentenced to death. The sin that Adam did was so powerful that no human being on the earth can escape death, no matter how good or bad you are. Adam's sin put an "age" on every single human when age didn't even exist. And even worst than that, Adam's sin brought eternal damnation. Eternal damnation is the spiritual life after the physical death, that's the life that lasts forever, it has no end. But this eternal damnation is a life separated from God in Hell. The moment a person would close their eyes for the last time on earth, their spiritual eyes would open in eternal life, whether that's in heaven or hell.
It wasn't God's will for sin to come into the world. It wasn't God's will for any man to die. God lives forever and He wanted everyone to live forever. God didn't want "disobedience" to be that powerful, so He sent the second Son to make "obedience" even more powerful. Through one man's sin, the world was destroyed but through one man's obedience, the world was saved. Adam, the first son, brought death through his sin, but Jesus, the second son, brought eternal life through his obedience.
Jesus was God in the flesh, meaning he was 100% God and 100% man. God is a spirit, so He put that spirit inside of Christ's body. That's how Christ was perfect and that's how Christ was without sin. He was able to do miracles like no other human being on earth could do because he was literally God. He could heal the sick, he could raise the dead, he could open the eyes of the blind, he could make the lame walk again, and he could cast out demonic spirits because he was God in an earthly body.
And even though Jesus was God, while he was on the earth he humbled himself. One would assume that God is supposed to be treated better than royalty, but Jesus wasn't. From the moment he was born, he denied his divine nature and took on a life similar to a poor man. Instead of being born in a hospital or at home, he was born in a dirty barn surrounded by a bunch of animals. Then he grew up in Nazareth, which was considered the ghettos of Galilee. As a young child, He knew he was God but he still submitted himself to his parents and to his leaders. He would go into the temples to listen to the priests who talked about God, yet they were completely unaware that this little boy was God in the flesh. Later on in life, Jesus would begin his ministry, but while he was ministering to the people, he himself had nowhere to live. He was homeless and would spend the nights in desert places as he traveled throughout the regions of Isreal. As a young child, He knew he was God but he still submitted himself to his parents and to his leaders. He would go into the temples to listen to the priests who talked about God, yet they were completely unaware that this little boy was God in the flesh. Later on in life, Jesus would begin his ministry, but while he was ministering to the people, he himself had nowhere to live. He was homeless and would spend the nights in desert places as he traveled throughout the regions of Isreal.
Then when the religious Pharisees and religious leaders within the church saw the miracles Jesus did, when they saw how he truly lived a righteous life (unlike how they professed to live but did the complete opposite) and how much the people love him more than them, they instantly became jealous and sought an opportunity to kill him. Jesus came to destroy religion that glorified man rather than God; that kept the people running to man and traditions rather than to God. The religious leaders wanted the people to come to them rather than seeking God for themselves. Therefore they constantly lied about Jesus but yet he didn't defend himself, he just took it. Even when it came time for him to be crucified, they mocked him and beat him so terribly that his flesh was torn off his body to the point where he wasn't even recognizable. They tortured Jesus, but he just took it. He didn't say a word to defend himself. When they nailed his hands and feet to the cross, he didn't resist them. Criminals were publicly hung on crosses in humiliation for their crimes, but yet they hung Jesus for sins he never committed. He took the humiliation and just let them do it. Even as he was hanging on the cross, they offered him wine mixed with vinegar to kill the pain, yet he didn't drink it. He went through the pain with a sober mind. Not only did Jesus feel the physical pain, but he also felt the spiritual pain on the cross.
The whole purpose of Jesus coming into the earth was to die for the sins of the world so we wouldn't have to experience spiritual death. So in the spirit, every single sin was laid upon him while he was on the cross. Murder is a sin, and behind every sin is a spirit. Imagine how murder feels to a person who was just murdered, well Jesus felt that spirit on the cross. Rape is a sin, and imagine how that feels to a person getting raped. Well, Jesus took the spirit of rape on the cross. Every single sin that you can possibly think of Jesus took on the cross, and in the spirit, he felt the pain of them along with the physical pain in his body. The shocking part about all this was the fact that Jesus was perfect, he did nothing to deserve any of this. We deserved to be hung on that cross but yet Jesus did it for us instead.
Jesus soon thereafter died on the cross, but on the third day, he rose from death and ascended to heaven with a new spiritual body. From his obedience and submission to the cross, he reversed the curse of sin and death that came from the first son, Adam. Instead of every human being experiencing eternal death; life eternally bounded in hell and separated from God; Jesus came so that everyone who would believe in Him might have eternal life, life in heaven that never ends.
With all that being said, my pieces are dedicated to everything that Jesus did on that cross so that the world might experience spiritual freedom and eternal life.