In this post, I’m going to walk with you through my mind during the creation of the Love Encompassing logo.

Welcome! I am glad you’re here.

Before I begin, let’s pause and rest on the assurance that God makes everything beautiful in His time. Thank you, God, for this confidence and this peace amidst truly horrible happenings across the globe, near to us, and often, within us.

When designing the Love Encompassing logo, I wanted to ensure that there was symbolism behind it, not only something pleasing to the eye. I didn’t want to run with current trends but rather something with eternal meaning. Love Encompassing is meant to be a vessel for the Lord and thus, the logo must follow suit. God is so good at directing creativity when we let Him, He did in fact create the Heavens and the earth after all! Genesis 1:1

I first started with a colour scheme and immediately my mind went to purple. My favourite colour is not, and has never been, purple. For most of my life I’ve loved yellow (before I could properly say the word actually… “lellow”). But when I think about purple, it’s a colour of royalty written about many times throughout the Bible. This logo is inspired by the beautifully horrific story in Matthew (27:27-31), Mark (15:16-20), Luke (23:10-11) and John (19:1-5). Jesus is stripped, made to put on a royal robe and crown of thorns, and then beaten and mocked, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews”. Mark and John describe Jesus being dressed in a purple robe; Matthew describes it as scarlet – for the sake of this logo, I sure hope it was more purple than red. I’ve done some research about this, and some suggest that lighting would affect the perception of the colour, that it was a faded red uniform, that the definition of the words in their original language could potentially overlap, and more. I was thinking it could perhaps be the first documented account of colour blindness. I’m mostly kidding, but either way, this scripture and the colour purple began to give me direction.

When I first thought of Jesus in that robe and crown before reading the passages, my inclination was to see His royalty in that image. I was excited to depict this in my logo. I then took to scripture and had the stark reminder of just how cruel that experience was. Being stripped in front of others, dressed up and mocked, spit on and beaten in the head are all humiliating and traumatic actions on their own. At this point, I had reconsidered using this story as inspiration at all. It seemed distasteful.

I took time to think about it and simply couldn’t seem to escape that initial image of royalty. With further prayer and reflection, the Lord gave me a different perspective. It is clear why I described this account as horrific, but the beauty was something I struggled to understand before this revelation. The mockers didn’t know just how right they were. The very words that were used to mock Jesus can, in sincerity, be used as worship. The crown and robe were a minimal representation of His true royalty and an excellent representation of His humble nature despite royalty. Don’t get me wrong, the actions are still horrific but the deeper meaning of what Jesus endured for you and me is a beautiful display of a love like no other.

In the logo, the rose was chosen because their stems have thorns – incorporating the crown of thorns that was placed on Jesus’ head. The purple is of course representing the robe and more importantly, Jesus’ royalty. Although subtle, this logo reminds me that God’s plans are beautiful and that the beauty is sometimes unknown to us, but we must trust in Him.

With this newfound perspective and countless hours of adjusting colours; sending drafts to loved ones; moving pieces of the image slightly to the right, to the left, back to the right; and other perfectionist tendencies; alas, we arrived at what you know as the Love Encompassing logo. We can ask the Lord about all these details in our lives that may seem unimportant or indifferent. Stay tuned as I’ll go deeper into this thought in a future blog. If you don’t want to miss any future posts, you can sign up for the email list here!

God makes everything beautiful in His time according to His purposes. (Ecclesiastes 3:11, Romans 8:28)

Sometimes being a Christian feels like wearing a crown of thorns. We try to live righteously and the world labels us with all sorts of hate-fueled titles. The closer we get to the Lord, the further we get from the world. We are imperfect and yet striving for perfection as we use Jesus as our goalpost. At times this seems to make people less forgiving of our inevitable mistakes because we have such a high standard. But let’s not forget what happened after the mocking and beating… crucifixion. A perfect, sinless, man murdered for what He truly was and still is.

Every ruthless word that has spewed off my tongue, every impure thought, every action that has come without good intention, and all the ugly things that have plagued my heart, and your heart, have been paid for in Jesus’ blood. I sometimes wonder, how can these things become beautiful? And then, God brings redemption. He gives me opportunities to see how His love has changed me. He allows me to connect to people with true empathy. Sometimes, I don’t see it at all, but He reminds me not to walk this path alone because when I try to… things get ugly. If you are currently facing darkness, I hope you will ask God for the only light that doesn’t burn out. “This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” 1 John 1:5

Jesus’ crucifixion even more so than the mocking, was beautifully horrific. Praise the Lord that we have freedom because of His great love and sacrifice. He made it beautiful in His time.

“You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:6-8