For Fathers’ Day, my daughter purchased tickets to the Van Gogh Immersive Exhibition currently on tour in Maryville. She knew that I would like to go, and she knew that I refuse to use ticket agents. Neither liars nor thieves not the sexually immoral nor anyone associated with Ticket Master will enter the kingdom of heaven. I do not know if Ticket Master sold the Van Gogh tickets, and the point is I would never have found out. And so, I would have missed a beautiful experience.

The exhibit was not only beautiful but also deeply moving and thought provoking. Van Gogh had thought to be a pastor and had trained for the vocation. But, in the end, a “higher” calling beckoned him, higher for him: the bringing forth of beauty into the world.

Van Gogh had a fascination with sunflowers and painted a series of pictures, some flowers lying loose on the table, some in vases. As I looked at the series and compared the individual paintings, this one especially captured my attention.

There is less detail on this painting than in those we more usually see.

A question came unbidden to mind and stopped me in my tracks before the paintings for some time: How did Van Gogh know when a painting was finished? Looking at the more minimal detail of the first painting, what led him to discern that one brush stroke fewer would leave the painting incomplete and one brush stroke more would mar its integrity with excess? And, from there my mind moved to what constitutes a finished life.

I have long thought that every life ends as an unfinished “work in progress;” now I am not so certain. At the end of his life, Jesus cried out, “It is finished.” Would one fewer breath have been incomplete and one more breath superfluous? The Gospel of St. Matthew says that, with a final cry, Jesus yielded up his spirit. That might simply be St. Matthew’s way of saying that Jesus died, but it seems that more is implied, that Jesus chose the moment of relinquishing his life: now, not a moment too soon, and not a moment later. How did he know, as a man, that the “painting” was finished?

And, what of my life? Am I confident enough in the providence of God to believe that my life will be complete in the moment of my departure, that one fewer breath would have left me undone and that one more might have destroyed me? To believe that is to understand — to truly understand — Jesus’ final cry, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!”

Van Gogh was an incomparable painter. Today, he served me as a faithful pastor.