{"id":5357,"date":"2026-04-10T08:41:24","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T12:41:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/?p=5357"},"modified":"2026-04-10T08:41:24","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T12:41:24","slug":"truth-tellers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/10\/truth-tellers\/","title":{"rendered":"Truth Tellers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,<\/em>\u00a0click here<\/a>
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Pablo Picasso\u2019s 1937 mural Guernica <\/em>is one of the most emotionally disturbing paintings of all time.
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It is enormous, standing about 12 feet tall and stretching 25 feet side to side.
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It is stark, featuring not a single vibrant color from his palette, but only blacks, whites, and grays.\u00a0
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It is abstract, displaying classic Picasso images bereft of realism and perspective.
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And it is painful, portraying the chaos and despair of people and animals suffering in the midst of war.
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On April 26, 1937, Nazi bombers \u2013 operating in support of Spain\u2019s ultra-right wing Nationalist Party \u2013 obliterated the ancient town of Guernica, a place of great historical significance in the Basque region.\u00a0Most of Guernica\u2019s male citizens were gone, having left to fight the Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War.\u00a0
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The bombing, which lasted two hours, was a slaughter.\u00a0Militarily, Guernica had no strategic value.\u00a0It offered no resistance.\u00a0Most of the casualties were women and children.
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The world would soon have forgotten the village and its name.\u00a0But Picasso\u2019s painting changed all that. The 20th<\/sup> century\u2019s most influential artist, who was Spanish by birth, invested Guernica <\/em>with all the rage and angst he could pour out upon the canvas.\u00a0
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He intended his work to be provocative.\u00a0And he definitely succeeded.\u00a0
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In 1944, when Picasso was under house arrest in Paris, a Nazi German officer looked at a copy of the painting and imperiously demanded, \u201cDid you do this?\u201d
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\u201cNo,\u201d Picasso snapped. \u201cYou<\/em> did!\u201d\u00a0\u00a0
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Over the centuries, numerous artists have assumed the role of prophet. A prophet is someone who points to reality and says, \u201cThis is wrong.\u00a0This has to change.\u00a0What are you going to do about it?\u201d
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The great prophets of Israel \u2013 the ones who called God\u2019s people to account for their idolatry, their pride, and their self-serving lifestyles \u2013 were not outsiders.\u00a0They were true-blue insiders, loyal and righteous Jewish believers who only wanted the best for their nation.
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Prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, and Hosea weren\u2019t rock-hurling, name-calling, hissy-fit-throwing strangers.\u00a0They were family members<\/em> who pleaded, \u201cWe can do better than this!\u201d
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It\u2019s not easy being a prophet.
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If you\u2019ve ever assumed the role of truth-teller in your own family, you realize it\u2019s a thankless job.\u00a0Most family members are invested in maintaining the status quo (even when it\u2019s deeply unhealthy), and are hoping against hope that you won\u2019t wreck Thanksgiving again this year.
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If you\u2019ve ever chosen to speak up at a workplace team meeting, you quickly found out that certain colleagues who had promised \u201cI\u2019ll have your back\u201d instead began looking at the floor or checking their cell phones for text messages.\u00a0
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But there\u2019s a reason God keeps calling women and men to be bravely prophetic.\u00a0
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In his book Everything Belongs, <\/em>Father Richard Rohr observes, \u201cCheap religion teaches us how to live successfully in a sick system.\u201d\u00a0
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Costly religion, on the other hand, invites us to stop, think, and trust that by relying on God\u2019s grace and power, broken realities in a broken world can actually be healed \u2013 if we are willing to confront them with humility, candor, and courage.
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Most of us aren\u2019t called to be outsiders who paint the big picture on a canvas.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
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But we are called, as loyal insiders, to bravely speak up for the world that God is even now working to bring about.
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here\u00a0Pablo Picasso\u2019s 1937 mural Guernica is one of the most emotionally disturbing paintings of all time.\u00a0It is enormous, standing about 12 feet tall and stretching 25 feet side to side.\u00a0It is stark, featuring not a single vibrant color from his palette, but only blacks, whites, and grays.\u00a0\u00a0It is abstract, displaying classic Picasso… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5358,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1099,108],"class_list":["post-5357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-prophets","tag-truth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5357"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5359,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5357\/revisions\/5359"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}