CMP Review 2025-04-13

Johannes Vermeer’s 1668 oil on canvas The Astronomer resides today in the Louvre in Paris. Arthur Wheelock says of it and its companion piece: “One senses in the scholars’ purposeful expression as they lean forward, with one hand firmly grasping a solid support, the excitement of intellectual inquiry as their inquisitive minds actively search for answers to questions they have posed about the earth and the stars.”

It’s a wonderful picture of the thirst for knowledge which compels people to “discern the face of the sky and of the earth.” But does that thirst also extend to discerning the face of God? It’s the question Christ asks in Luke 12:57, paraphrased by J. R. Dummelow as, “Why, even without signs, do you not judge rightly of Me and My doctrine by the natural light of reason and conscience?”

Charlotte Mason’s poem “Weather Signs” helps us meditate on these verses, and encourage us to actively search not just the heavens, but the words of the One who made them. Find it here.

@artmiddlekauff