The full transcript is below (edited for clarity):

Pastor Brad Carpenter: I guess I will say good morning I'm here with Amy Wagner, and Amy I approached you a few weeks ago now and asked if you would be willing to be commissioned to do our art for our next sermon series and that starts today. So, I'm going to be preaching from Romans on in this series called, "But now... the Cross" and examining the different ways that Romans talks about what it was that Jesus did when God's grace interrupted the world. So, I gave you a couple of questions. You've got an amazing piece of art that we don't get to encounter personally, but will you tell us a little bit about your piece, your medium, and the decisions that you made.

Amy Wagner: Yeah! So, this is paint mostly on wood with just a little bit of ink.

Pastor Brad: Can you spin it? See the wood you were telling me your brother cut the wood for you.

Amy: Yeah, he found it in my grandpa's workshop and cut it down for me. It's cherry.

Pastor Brad: When I told you about the idea for the sermon, how did you arrive at the the painting that you did and, you know, just tell us a little bit about what you were thinking.

Amy: Yeah. So, you sent me a long chunk of verses in Romans and I specifically kind of honed in on Romans 3, I think. It's 22 through 24. Specifically, this part because I grew up learning the verse, "...for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God..." and never knew that that's not the end of the sentence like the rest of the sentence says, "...and all are Justified freely by his grace." and, so, I was really impacted by that as I was researching and trying to brainstorm ideas for what to make for this series. Especially, the word "grace" I looked up the Greek definition and it says it's almost like more of an action than I'd ever thought of it before as. It's like "inclined or leaning towards" as if like God is leaning down to pick up like a toddler almost is the image that was in my mind. So, I wanted to make art that reflected that idea of God constantly leaning down towards us and like freely giving himself to us all the time.

Pastor Brad: Okay, when I look at it I see almost like a a mother leaning down to her child or to a toddler is there significance for you that it's a mother in your picture.

Amy: Yeah. I think that was the first [thought] when I was thinking about that idea of God leaning down towards us. Just like the that that picture of a parent, the first thing that popped up for me was a mom because I think there's just a specific type of like mercy and care and tenderness that a mother extends towards her child. Also, just because there are so many like families in Grace Sac. I feel like every Sunday when we're not quarantine, I'm there, [and] I see so many moms picking up their kids and dads, too. But, I was really specifically struck by just the tenderness of a mom picking up her baby. So, I think it's beautiful.

Pastor Brad: I wish it was hanging in our presence. We're going to get our hands on it so it can be on the screen but it's also going to become digital so when people go on the website to look for these sermons or whatever that'll be the icon. Man, I mean, I have this I have this love for beauty in our midst when we gather to worship. But, for you, why is art or beauty important for gathering and for worship?

Amy: I think like personally for the artist it's important just as a way of engaging with God in a really personal way because you're using [the?] brain and the specific passions and creativity he's given. Then, for like the
viewer, I just think that like God is beautiful and he loves beautiful things and he often times uses beauty to like soften our hearts towards him; and, so, having beauty in a worship setting in that type of context I think as a viewer...if you're looking at it and you can appreciate it and love it it helps you also appreciate and love God more because it's just...beautiful things kind of reflect who He is in a lot of different ways. I think using that in worship it can help you realize different things about his character that are beautiful and wonderful.

Pastor Brad: So, [is there] anything you want people to notice about this piece that we haven't said, [or] that we haven't talked about?

Amy: Well, kind of. This might it might be really hard to notice. I don't know because this is a bit more simplistic than the inspiration but there's a piece by Rembrandt called "The Prodigal Son" where the father has two hands on the prodigal son after he's returned home and one hand is distinctly masculine and one is very feminine to show the type of care and love that God gives to people. So, for this, the hand is a little bit more masculine looking. I'm not sure if people can tell but I tried to use reference pictures that were all masculine hands [...] even though I love, you know, moms are great, I also was like there's a lot of great dads also picking up their kids, so I want to somehow represent right. So, the hand is a little bit more masculine-looking.

Pastor Brad: People are going to be zooming in on their screens once we put this up online so that they can examine the hands reaching.

Amy: Makes me a little nervous.

Pastor Brad: Amy, I appreciate you a ton. I'm really grateful that we're going to have your art on display in whatever way we can and the unscheduled credit is that I don't know that a lot of people know that Amy is also the film editor for last week's Psalm 136 video. So, thank you for all of the art that you've been contributing and for all that you add. I'm gonna thank you and this would be the point where it's like somebody comes up and reads scripture and I guess we preach. Thanks for being with us.