I haven’t blogged for ages, but thought it was about time again, as there is so much to reflect on.
It struck me yesterday that there are two ways of looking at life- portrait and landscape. Both ways of looking are interesting and have their place. You see pictures painted as portraits offer us a close up view of how someone has been captured at a particular moment in time. The person we paint is often in the centre of the picture with eyes and face highlighted and sometimes we see their hands or instruments of their profession and such details are really important. It is good to remember times and occasions when things were a certain way, when we thought we could control how things were. Often in portraits the subject will be looking at us making us ask questions about who they are. Sometimes they will be looking outwards, even looking ahead to what will be or over to particular symbolic objects.
On the other hand landscape pictures like pictures of natural landscapes ask us to look differently. They invite us to look as if out of a window and see this as the view and to cast our eyes around and take a moment to breathe. To really look. Landscape pictures ask us to pause and note the bigger picture. Often they will show a view that takes us way beyond ourselves. They highlight the marvels of creation, the hills or lakes, sea or sky. Like Psalm 22 they might join us saying I lift my eyes to the hills…and reflect where will my help come from? Such pictures offer a perspective which may well include the foreground details but they also invite us to look beyond, to the hinterland where sun or sky, mountains or valleys lie. For they remind us to look up beyond our circumstances to the One from whom all help comes.
And in between there will often be a space where we can lose ourselves or find ourselves for a moment, wondering or wandering.
As we ponder the landscape of Corona, let us remember to pause and turn the paper of our lives around for a while. Let’s move from being centre of our own pictures and rein in our plans for a while and think of others around us.
And...whilst so many of us are seemingly restricted in our movements and activities, let’s also take a moment to stand and stare out the window and look beyond the current crisis to a further horizon. For God is from everlasting to everlasting and one day we will dance again…and share our food and sing together, not taking it all for granted as we sometimes do.
Ruth
