The drawings are eyes and faces that reflect the needs of the ages. They are more than just exquisitely rendered works of art born out of charcoal and paper. As another artist has commented, "I can draw as well as that, but I can't draw like that."
   There is a feeling, an intensity, an emotion that exists within Jack Shively's drawings that comes from somewhere else, and the artist is quick to admit the Source. To this artist, Jesus is the total Motivator, the Ultimate Art Director, who designed and orchestrated the series of drawings that eventually became a moving art book entitled, The Least of These.
   The vision began in 1979 when the artist was shown the cover of his yet to be project in a dream.
   "The cover was so expensive. It looked like real silver," Jack relates. "I knew God was showing me how much He valued the subject matter, but at the time I didn't know that I would be doing a book. I really didn't understand what it meant."
   Then something happened that changed the artist's life.
   "Shortly afterward, my wife, Hannah and I, lost our home in a business deal. Up to that point we had been an average, comfortable Christian couple. Suddenly we were thrown out of the secure little world we had made for ourselves."
   A journey began that would take the Shively's across the country and back again. On the way, the faces Jack was seeing in the streets and in the campgrounds where so many of the homeless must live, began to breathe their reality into his work.
   The Shivelys considered themselves blessed that they could live in a travel trailer when so many families they saw were living in their cars or tents. Jack's studio was in the small camper shell on the back of his truck where the majority of the drawings were produced - not without a certain amount of pain and grumbling.
   "My wife had to remind me often that I was identifying with my subject matter," the artist remembers. "The work was not produced in a lush, comfortable studio where my subjects existed remotely in the distance. My understanding of the needs because of my own situation helped produce much of the emotion in this work, which was God's intention all along."
   The Shively's realized the importance of a loving, caring church - individuals who God sent to them periodically to help meet their needs. Jack says they learned to live on miracles.
   "When our car broke down and we had no money, there was always a compassionate mechanic who just "happened" to be there who would fix it for free. On at least two occasions total strangers approached us saying, "God told me to give you this", and we were handed funds to deliver us in a crisis. Our road was hard, but worthwhile because we learned how to trust God in ways we would have never known if we had not lost our house and what we thought was our security. We learned to be secure no matter what our situation, because God would never fail, nor forsake us.
   "Care for the needy is a major theme of Scripture," Jack continues, "and I have often wondered why it is not a major issue in many of our churches. We live in an affluent society. Are we afraid that, like the rich young ruler, Jesus is going to look at us the same way and tell us to "Let go?" It's something we really don't have to fear. As my wife says, we're just clinging to our old clay beads, when God wants to replace them with diamonds."
   Turn the pages. Look at the faces and see where the real treasure lies. It's found in "The Least of These."

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