Luke 1_37

I'm going to give you my process of inspiration.

So the first thing is that this post, this particular verse, I've been using the John MacArthur New Testament reading plan, which is basically you read you read through the New Testament, you read one of the, you know, a portion of the New Testament.

If it's a short epistle, then you'd read the whole thing, and you'd read it over and over again for like 30 days. And then if it's a long gospel, or then you would read a certain portion of it, and then you would read the next portion of it over the next 30 days and so forth.

And so I'm going through Luke at the moment, and I've been doing a pretty terrible job at it. But Luke 1, verse 37, I came across. And then the irony was that I have an app called Dwell. And about 2 days ago, verse 137 was verse of the day.

And it just stayed there for like 2 days, even though it was verse of the day.

And then so I went and had a look at what 137 was, and the irony is, like, the number 137 is easy to remember, and so it was basically when the angel of the Lord Gabriel goes and speaks to, obviously, Mary and Elizabeth.

And then it got me thinking, it's interesting, it's like the New and the Old Testaments shadow each other, and, you know, I distinctly remember, you know, the troubles and the challenges that Abraham and Sarah had, you know, trying to conceive.

And I distinctly remember when, you know, it would have been 10 years or so when once the promise was made, and both, you know, they were 100 years old. They were, so both Sarah and Abraham were quite old, and the angel of the Lord came, spoke to Abraham, Abram.

And then his name would be Abraham, and Sarah is obviously, you know, listening in and, you know, laughing, chuckling, thinking, you know, I'm old. And then the angel confronts Sarai. And it just got me thinking, it's like, we want to know how things are going to happen.

And when we do things, we believe in our own will, and we believe in our own ability, and we believe in our own planning.

And sometimes we have things like impossible goals, and sometimes we have things like impossible, you know, objectives that we set because we want to stretch ourselves, and we do the work and we stretch, and we get there. And maybe there's like a tiny element of luck.

Or maybe there's something that happens that's absolutely impossible. And if you're a non-believer, you go, yeah, that's fine. That's like, that was a miracle. And I remember being called out in my Bible study when I was talking to, when I was asking for prayer.

And I said, you know, I just need a little bit of luck. And Russell, the Connect leader, he basically said, luck. Do you believe in luck?

And it really kind of came down to, like, there is no such thing as luck if you believe, because there's a thing called providence, and he is sovereign. And so with all things, you know, he, as in God, will make things happen. All things are possible with God.

And there have been so many times where people have talked about miracles, you know, out of sickness, or, you know, certain things happening, you know, out of dire straits. And so I thought I wanted to create something around this particular verse.

Now, as far as the creative is concerned, I use a particular style that I have.

I've been using ChatGPT quite a bit, and I was saying, you know, create this image of, and I gave the verse only, and it then created this very cheesy anime image of an angel talking to Mary, and they look young, and it looked like something like out of a cartoon, but it doesn't know what good or bad is, or taste is.

It just did what it thought it would do based upon the data sets it had. And so then I kept going back and forth in ChatGPT to try and edit it. And then as far as the angel's concerned, I thought, I don't want to see the face of the angel of the Lord.

And then I thought of Tyrael from Diablo. And I thought, what if I used that, like, you know, a hooded angel and you couldn't see his face. And so that's where that came from. And then I kept going back and forth. And then I thought, I don't like this particular style.

And I kept, you know, putting in things like, you know, make the inking stronger, and, you know, make it low poly and this and that. And it just didn't work. And then eventually I thought, what if I just went with stained glass kind of feel and look?

And then it came out, and I was quite pleased with it. And then, but it just, anything that comes out of, AI can look a little bit flat, and can look a little bit, I wouldn't say the word polished, but it just looks very artificial.

And so I had to then ask for versions where I didn't have Mary, and then I had the angel only, and then I had to layer it, and I had to make things blurry, and I added in gradients and shadows and things like that. And then obviously it's through that work.

And even when I just upload an image and say, create this and this, like, it never comes out the way you want it to. And I think there's something to be said about that. The level of just human artistry around certain things is important.

It's the difference between doing something and just getting a raw output from a machine, as opposed to just being able to manicure something and create a level of finish on top of it. And so that's what this verse really was about.