CD Cover — From Above

A few years ago I produced a prophetic worship CD, and realized I would have to have a cover.  Production costs were straining my budget, so I knew I would have to create the cover myself.  I prayed for God’s help.

I am a bit color blind and have almost no experience in graphic arts.  My CD producers would accept a cover in one of several formats, including Quark, a program my wife had on her computer.  I found a tutorial and within a couple of hours knew I could create the layout.  All I needed was the art.

Common sense told me I needed patches of dark or light where text in black or white would have enough contrast to be readable. A key song focused on the Father calling His sons home, so I wanted an image that would suggest both the glory of God and a homecoming theme.

I had bought Corel software a year or two earlier and went through their stock images.  I found a farmhouse in a sunset with mist.  A golden cast ran through the image.

It was much longer than it was high, almost like a license plate.  I squared the image, to fit the graphic requirements of a CD.  Depending on the needs of each page of the cover, I cropped and resized the image.  It came out as I had hoped:  a golden mist reminiscent of God’s glory, a farmhouse with cars parked outside, and room for text where I needed it.

I was happy to receive compliments for my cover, especially when they came from graphic artists.  I gave God credit for anything I had done right; He had showed me what to do.  Then more than a year later, the story took an odd turn.

I wrote a book about prophetic song, and wanted to reuse the image from the CD on the book’s cover.  I took the files to a graphic artist and said, “Can we take the bush out of the image and set it on fire – a burning bush?”

He tried it, and it looked scary.  When we zoomed in on the bush, it looked like a man in a robe, standing with arms extended.  Our added fire made it look like a man that was burning to death.  It was too scary to use, and I let my publisher, Xulon Press, design my book cover.

But the bush that looks like a man became a testimony.  It was as if God had put His signature on the CD cover, giving this token that He is indeed calling His sons home.

I was ministering out of town and standing with a cluster of people at my book table.  I told them about the bush, saying, “Look for Jesus on the cover of the CD.”  Suddenly someone exclaimed, “There He is!” as he pointed to the upper left corner of the cover.

“No, He’s in the center,” I said.  But the other person insisted.  So I looked again, and there He was, looking through the branches of a tree.  It was a clearer likeness than what we had found in the bush.

Other Christian artists tell me they too have had this kind of experience at times.  It doesn’t always happen; I made another cover for a workbook but, in spite of searching carefully, haven’t found any hidden images.

What does it mean?  For me, it has awakened me to the reality that God will give us sounds and images that will make an impact.  This little accident with my art – it was an accident to me, but a design by God – has caused me to be proactive in seeking God’s inspiration in my work.

This is just a token, of course.  There can be more profound fruits of God’s inspiration.  But if we are Christian artists, we have more resources to draw from than just our own talents or ideas.

Stan Smith  ::  © 2008, GospelSmith  ::  www.GospelSmith.com