“stars.” Poem & Illustration

stars.
constant through the ages, contrasting light and dark.
yet only when we stop do their constellations catch our eye.
every generation has seen the sight.
and every night, without noise, their voice is heard.
like backlit keyboard letters,
illuminated text,
the silent lights speak.
we are those who listen.

they speak of a king
coronated by wanderers,
the morning and evening star,
ruler of heaven and earth.
god’s sun
born at the feet of the virgin
and laid to rest there once more
before sunrising, bringing life undying
to those who see and believe.

we are those who see and believe.
stars,
like the sun.
beacons of light in surrounding spheres of influence.
individually brilliant,
collectively breathtaking.
belonging to heaven,
shining on earth,
that mortals may see eternity.

may we, like streams of light, pierce the darkest matters
and bridge the gap that separates.
may our faithful presence speak of realities beyond what eyes can see.
may goodness, truth, and beauty—like gravity—draw us ever closer to the sun,
igniting our souls with holy fire.
and, should we run out of gas,
may our burning hearts explode like supernovas
and enter realms of glory,
leaving radiant rainbows of god’s faithfulness in the dust behind.

Name: Stars
Artist: Michael J.D. Linsner
Date: December 13, 2017
Medium: charcoal on paper, edited in Photoshop

Summary

“stars.” was written and illustrated to be my submission for the final project of my faith and design course in the fall of 2017. The entire project took about three weeks to complete. Design thinking took about a week-and-a-half, working on the poem took about another next week, and the accompanying image took about two days to create.

The illustration was initially made using black charcoal on white paper. The image was then scanned and brought into Adobe Photoshop Elements 13, where I inversed the image and added a navy blue dissolve texture to the piece.

The Story Behind “stars.”

The inspiration for “stars.” came to me during the winter of 2017 as the fall semester of my junior year was coming to a close. The final project for my faith and design course was to make or design something fully integrated with my faith, and, at the time, I had recently discovered the musical artist Sleeping At Last on Spotify and had been listening to his Atlas: Year One project on repeat. Inspired by his poetic lyrics and passionate wonder, I decided to fulfill the requirements of my final project by writing a poem about something that I had recently grown deeply passionate about—the gospel.

My view of the gospel had been radically reimagined during my evangelism course earlier that semester as I read The King Jesus Gospel by Scot McKnight, and I wanted to take the opportunity to describe, in poetry, what I had been learning—specifically pertaining to what it means to be a Christian witness.

“stars.” is about noticing the ways that God communicates the story of the gospel through his creation.

In the first stanza, I write about the way that the stars “declare the glory of God” if we're willing to listen (Psalm 19:1-4). The second stanza is about how the gospel is fulfilled in Jesus—his birth, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension as the highest authority in the universe. Stanzas three and four are about the role of believers in sharing the gospel, not only individually but also collectively. It’s a call for the Church to be the “light of the world” (Matt. 5:14) and a vision of how the Church might do that.

As I wrote the poem, I also pulled inspiration from what I had been learning about in the space unit of my science textbook. So, in many ways, the poem was, for me, a culmination of a semester’s-worth of learning.

Below, I’ve embedded a Spotify playlist of the songs that helped inspire the poem. I’ve also included some of the notes that I took during the design thinking process of the project.