Psalm 2:13
season of mercy, portending wrath
When his wrath shall be kindled in a short time, blessed are all they that trust in him. (Psalm 2:13 DR)
As this Psalm concludes, the Psalmist makes one final appeal to the rulers of this world, that they reject their wicked ways and submit their rule to the rule of the King, Jesus Christ, whom God has appointed over all the earth. Their reigns on this earth may seem lengthy, but there is a judgment at hand, the short time to which the Psalmist alludes. St. Peter seems to echo the Psalmist when he says:
But of this one thing be not ignorant, my beloved, that one day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord delayeth not his promise, as some imagine, but dealeth patiently for your sake, not willing that any should perish, but that all should return to penance. But the day of the Lord shall come as a thief, in which the heavens shall pass away with great violence, and the elements shall be melted with heat, and the earth and the works which are in it, shall be burnt up. (2 Peter 3:8-10 DR)
That God’s judgment does not immediately fall upon us for our sins is due solely to His mercy, and His seeming delay in bringing about the final judgment is precisely to give man the opportunity to repent. The penance of which St. Peter speaks is equivalent to how the Psalmist concludes this verse, that all who trust in the Lord are blessed. This blessedness comes about because it is a shield from the fires of judgment. The rulers of this world trust in their power and riches, but all these things will pass away with great violence, which is how St. Peter describes the wrath in the day of judgment of which the Psalmist speaks.
The imagery of kindling wrath evokes the starting of a fire, which lies dormant until it is ignited and then rapidly spreads. We are in the season of mercy, in which God gives us opportunity to turn from our wicked ways and do penance for our sins. In our life and our deeds we should build with non-flammable materials (cf. 1 Corinthians 3:10-15) rather than by our sins laying down kindling for the fires of wrath.
This animation was pretty fun to make.
I had previously made this animated flame using shapes, masks and some distortion effects for a project and thought it’d be nice to reuse. It’s all procedurally generated, so no keyframes or anything like that, which is nice.
I did modify it somewhat to give it a bit of a different look, and then precomped various components of it. I brought in some textures and matted them to the animated base shapes to give it a collage-y type of look. I then precomped all those precomps and applied Shadow Studio to it for the long glow-shadow (which I suppose is a contradiction in terms, but oh well…). I finally added a gradient background and applied some blending modes to get a bunch of crazy colors that still seem to work together somehow.
Enjoy.
When his wrath shall be kindled in a short time, blessed are all they that trust in him.
(Psalm 2:13 DR)
View a higher quality version of this gif here: