Marilyn and I designed images of Luther’s Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer to be printed on canvas. We will hang them in our bedroom where we pray these prayers together at the altar of our bedside. We offer them to you, should you wish to use them also.
In this post we:
- Provide the images that you can download
- Explain a little bit of the idea behind the designs
- Provide a link to a review of various online canvas print services
- Explain step-by-step how we used the images to order our canvas prints
The Images
You can download the images from the following links (right click, save picture as):
Idea Behind the Designs:
Baptism and Morning/Evening Prayer
The idea behind their design comes from the writing of William Chancellor Weedon. His book, Thank, Praise, Serve, and Obey: Recover the Joys of Piety, has a section titled, “The Altar of the Bedside,” pp. 26-39. Weedon shows the connection between Baptism and the morning and evening prayers in Luther’s Small Catechism, which include:
- Triune invocation
- Sign of the cross
- Creed
- Lord’s Prayer
- Luther’s Morning Prayer
- Luther’s Evening Prayer
As Weedon says:
“All of life is lived from the standpoint of our Baptism. It is the start and ending of our day, that event that began our life in Christ and will, on the day of our death, complete it.”[1]
In our day, mindfulness is a popular concept. In a sense, mindfulness is what these prayers do for the Christian: they make you mindful of whose you are, of how precious you are to Him, and of how pleased He is by faith and the good works that follow.[2]
These prayers can help you bracket your day in your Baptism.
So, we included an image of Baptism on each of the canvasses. On the canvas for Morning Prayer, that image is to the left, like an opening bracket. On the canvas for the Evening, the image is to the right, like a closing bracket. The image for morning is of a font such as the one at which you and I were baptized. The image for evening is of the Baptism of Christ.
Weedon says the parts of the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer that are especially helpful at evening are about the forgiveness of sins.
For as we reflect upon the doings of the day, we see our many failures to have lived in our baptismal freedom. We recall the moments we slipped back into the old ways and allowed the sinful self to gain an upper hand.[3]
That is why we used the Baptism of Christ for Evening Prayer. Luther says Christ:
accepted [Baptism] from John for the reason that he was entering into our stead, indeed, our person, that is becoming a sinner for us, taking upon himself the sins which he had not committed, and wiping them out and drowning them in his holy baptism.[4]
The image of the Baptism of Christ reminds us that even in our failures to live the resurrected life of a baptized saint, Christ has fulfilled all righteousness for us, even by being baptized for us, not for himself.
We include the cross because of the sign of the cross, which marks Christ’s ownership. We are not our own. We are bought with a price, the precious blood of Christ. He voluntarily submitted to be crucified that He might purchase and win us to be his own.
Book Recommendations
We highly recommend that you get Weedon’s book and read at least pages 26 to 39.
We also highly recommend John T. Pless’ book, Praying Luther’s Small Catechism. As with Weedon’s book, this whole book is some of the best material you could ever read. The parts of Pless’ book most connected to these images of Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer are Chapter 5 titled, “Holy Baptism: Calling On the Name Given to Us,” and Chapter 8 titled, “Give Us Our Daily Bread: Morning, Evening, and Mealtime.”
You never will regret the money or time invested in these two life-changing, life-stabilizing books. These books bring clarity and vitality to your understanding of what the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit do for you in Baptism, and how Baptism becomes the breath of prayer. After you read them, you will realize how Baptism is not simply the portal in the past through which you entered into membership in the Church. Instead of saying, “I was baptized,” you learn to say morning and evening — and in the throes of life’s distresses and trials — “I am baptized.”
Review of Online Canvas Print Services
There are many places where custom canvas prints may be ordered online. To help you select one, you might want to look at Canvas Prints Reviews.
Ordering Canvas Prints Step-by-Step
After considering the features and options available, we tried one site, got all the way to the end, and the shopping cart would not let us pay by either PayPal or credit card. We entered everything both ways, and the page just locked up.
So we went with our second choice, CanvasHQ.
When you first go to CanvasHQ, make note of any promo code for the day. We got 30 percent off using the promo code the day we ordered.
Click the “Upload” button. That opens a dialog box that lets you navigate your file storage and choose the image to upload.
Once the file is uploaded, the page changes to let you set options. You can the orientation, size, border, frame depth, canvas finish, and image effect.
The image is designed at 14 inches wide by 8 inches high. That is a landscape dimension. We chose landscape orientation.
It happens that 14×8 is not one of the generic dimensions. We used the dropdown list box to set custom dimensions.
The “border” is not on the face of the canvas. It is on the edge, 90 degrees from the face. We used the “Choose Color” option. The background of the typography on the images we designed has a hex value of #e2d5b5. We entered that value to make the edges match the background. Another time, we might try another color, or use different frame or border options altogether at a different site.
We chose a 1.5 inch frame depth. We read elsewhere that thinner frame depths might not hold the stretch of the canvas as well. We did not want to risk warp or wrinkle over time.
We chose the matte finish, because the page says it is recommended for typography. These images, because of the texts of the Morning Prayer and the Evening Prayer, have a lot of typography, which we wanted to be optimized.
We left the image effect at the default “original.” Had we wanted an effect, we would have designed the image with it ourselves.
When you finish those options, scroll back to the top of the page and look at the right column. That is where you continue the process. You have a couple more options to consider, about an email proof and letting the service retouch your image. We checked the “please don’t edit my photo” option. We entered the canvas name Luther’s Morning Prayer for the morning prayer image, and when we went back through all this for the other image, we entered Luther’s Evening Prayer.
Then click add to cart. Once at the cart, you can see the rest of your way as usual for online shopping. Remember to enter the promo code for any promotional discount being offered.
This was our first time ordering a printed canvas product, so this whole thing as a Version 1.0 effort. We hope it helps you.
________________________
[1] Weedon, p. 39.
[2] Weedon, p. 34.
[3] Weedon, p. 37
[4] AE 51:315 as quoted in The Lutheran Study Bible (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2009), on Mathew 3:13, p. 1582.
These are beautiful!!!