Artist: M Alice Abrams
Title: Burrs
Medium: Linoleum Block Print
Size: 7 x9 in.
Artist Statement: 
Recently the church’s Sunday school curriculum covered a touchy topic. The lesson had been known about since the release of the curriculum, and was anticipated to be highly controversial. I think every single one of us sat with bated breath, wondering where this conversation was going to end up going.
 
One of my friends in the class shared the most beautiful testimony at a critical point when I feared my poker face was giving way. That tightness in my chest, fight or flight instinct, restless leg was reaching critical max. Many of us were feeling it with the sweaty palms and shifting weight in our seats. She said something along the lines of knowing that she doesn’t know all things, but that Christ won’t suffer that one sheep would enter his stable at the end of the day with a burr in their wool. He won’t let one of us enter heaven in an uncomfortable relationship, situation, or mindset. We will be at peace. He will cleanse us of our burrs. Immediately after she spoke those truths, the tension melted and I felt my jaw unclench. We all needed that.
 
My friend’s comment didn’t offer solutions, or apologetics, or anything other than a heartfelt knowledge that someday the things that get into our layers and hurt us will be removed, and we will feel relief.
 
I’m not sure where she got that image, I’ve scoured the scriptures and internet looking for a reference to burrs in world, but that image of Christ as the shepherd gently pulling burrs from each of his sheep’s wool so they can rest comfortably was an image I knew I had to put to paper.