Depicting glory …

…  VAN GOGH’S GOD.

Though he no longer took the Bible literally, he found inspiration in Scripture’s “lofty ideas.” Christ-haunted, he regarded Jesus as “a greater artist than all other artists” because his medium wasn’t marble, clay, or color, but “living flesh.” Every corner of creation pulses with divinity. “I think sometimes I see something deeper, more infinite, more eternal than the ocean in the expression of the eyes of a little baby when it wakes in the morning,” he wrote, adding, “All nature seems to speak. . . . I do not understand why everyone does not see and feel it; nature or God does it for everyone who has eyes and ears and a heart to understand.”