Hometown Living At Its Best 91
Meredith painted this version of The Prodigal during a return visit to Mozambique. The
original, which was destroyed when the building was removed, was about boys returning to
their families. In this version, her focus was about people restoring relationship with God.
Pastor, “I don’t want to paint your wall;
I want to paint that wall.” But when
she got to the meeting, she just said
it plainly: “I was coming to talk with
you about your wall, but I just saw
this other pastor’s church, and I think
that’s the one I’m supposed to paint.”
The guy looked at her and said,
“Well, since it’s Holy Week, we have
a community service every night this
week at a different church, and tonight
it’s at that church. If you come, I’ll
introduce you to the Pastor.”
Meredith went to the meeting, and
as soon as she asked about painting
a mural on the side of the church
building, he said, “Sure.”
“I said, ‘Do you need to see the
plans for what I want to do?’ He said,
‘No. Just start painting.’ And after three
weeks of wrestling with all the different
pastoral committees in that city, I just
had it in a night.”
On the side of the church building
that faced the main highway that went
around the island, Meredith painted
a scene of Jericho using the people in
the community as her models. “I saw
an image of people in that community
breaking free from old strongholds,
stepping into God’s kingdom and his
freedom, and living a life that was not
held back by cycles of generational
sin.”
Many people in the community
came while she was working to thank
her. “They would come up to me and
say, ‘That’s what I’ve been praying and
asking God for: to come in and break
down the strongholds and cycles of
poverty that are holding us back.’”
Return to Mozambique
Meredith’s next stop was to be
Scotland. But while she was in Peru,
she received an email from Sarah
Mondlane, the woman who started
the ministry where she’d painted a
mural in Mozambique, saying that
their landlord had sold the building out
from under them, and it was being torn
down.
“Finding out that the painting
I had just worked so hard on was
getting torn down was really difficult.”
Meredith questioned, “Why am I going
through all of this if it’s just going to
be torn down?” The answer she heard
was “that it wasn’t mine to think about
or worry about. God had purposes and
good things for each of these projects,
and my part was just to be obedient.”
Another difficult part of Meredith’s
work was all the alone time. “I’d been
praying for a friend to travel with
because it was becoming a lot to be
alone so much.”
Three answers came at once. One,
in the form of an email from Sarah
in Mozambique saying the ministry
had relocated, and she asked if
Meredith would come back and paint
another mural for their new location.
The second was a closed door. The
scheduling for Scotland just wouldn’t
“Prophetic artwork is something God put in my heart
to help encourage and comfort broken people,” said
Meredith. “When you recognize beauty and appreciate it,
you feel a natural gratitude. And that, to me, is worship.”