Fuzzy Felt and chainsaws

Evening, Lord God. 

You know how you tell me things, and I don't get it? Well, I want to understand. I don't want to miss the point. It seems important. 

The other day, I was in a prayer meeting praying for the ministry among women at our church. There is already a women's ministry at our church; lots of things are already going on, but it has felt for a while now that a time was coming to bring all the strands together somehow. To become a team, maybe.

I'm not really sure why, or how - I'm just sure that it's what we're supposed to do. 

So anyway, a group of us, praying. Over the months there have been a surprising number of words and pictures given to us that seem to be relevant to women in church, and women in general.

• We have had pictures of climbing a mountain enveloped in fog, clinging to each other, and getting to a high place where the view is clear and beautiful. 
• An oasis in a desert, ladies laughing and having fun together, uninhibited and unselfconscious. 
• A lion confined in a cage, pacing back and forth as we eat a picnic from a red and white checked cloth, perfectly safe. 
• A tree, firmly rooted in you, stretching tall and strong, bearing fruit of every type. People coming from far and wide to choose and pick fruit from the beautiful tree. 

So, there I was. Trying to make my mind blank like a black Fuzzy Felt board so that you could draw me a picture.

Sometimes I think I try too hard, and I know that you're not dependent on me creating the perfect environment for communication; you are just as capable of grabbing my attention in the supermarket frozen foods aisle with a six year old in my trolley as when I am trying to empty my mind of everything.

So, suddenly on my Fuzzy Felt mind was an aerial picture of a church. Not from straight above, but the sort of view you'd get from a hot air balloon looking sideways over a town. Neither was it our church, for this one had a tall steeple. Indeed, all I could see of this church was the roof and the steeple, because all around it were trees. Big, mature trees. So close that the walls of the church were obscured. It must have been very dark inside. I couldn't see a door in the church, or any ground around it. It was a church totally crowded with trees.

I knew that there were people in the church. I don't know what they were doing, but they were in a huddle in the middle of the building. There weren't many.And then, I suddenly became aware that the trees need to go.

They need to be chopped down.

There was to be a row of tree-stumps around the church, allowing light to stream in through the windows. 

So people could find it. Anyone passing by on the nearby road might have missed the church, unless they glanced up high and saw the spire pointing heavenwards out from the canopy of trees. Surely this church was hidden. 

Choked. 

The church needed to breathe again. The people inside needed light and air. They were going to come out of the church doors and rejoice at the sense of space. They could see the sun. They could look into the distance where before they could only see the trees.They would be able to see the area around the church too. They could see the passers-by, the people who hurried by without even knowing that the church was there. 

What does it mean, Father?  Is this some sort of sign? What can I learn from this? 

There's a bit more. 

Another day I was sitting quietly in the garden and a neighbour began to cut down a tree in his garden. This tree is on his side of the fence, completely his to cut down, but I wish he hadn't. I liked it there. And because he's cut that one down, we'll probably have to cut down one of ours, as the missing tree had enveloped it so completely that it's unsightly and stunted.

I began by having an internal moan about the noise of his chainsaw, which shattered my peace and destroyed concentration. I don't like that he's cut down the tree because now we have less privacy in our garden - it feels much more open now.

I also went on to develop my grumpy feelings by reflecting that the tree in question has been there all my life; and so no wonder I liked it where it was. I am very used to it.

I scowled for quite some time. 

It got me thinking back to the church choked with trees. I love trees, and I've never really thought of them as being restrictive, or unwanted, but in this picture the trees were suffocating. Pressing in. Swamping. 

They need cutting down to enable the people inside to breathe, and the people outside to take notice. They might even come in and say hello, if they could see the way in.

Quite separately, someone who isn't involved with the women's ministry at church passed on a picture she had to my friend, because she thought it was relevant. She said that it was an axe, at the base of a tree.

Hmm.

I'm forever asking you for clarity, Lord, and I think the message loud and clear has to do with trees and the cutting down of trees. Correct me if I'm wrong...

I've started noticing trees being cut down all over the neighbourhood. I came across a clearing in a wood not far from my house the other day and in it was a huge pile of logs and tree trunks. A patch of dense woodland had been cleared and the sunlight streamed in  - it was a beautiful, peaceful place. 

 It's not the first time that I've had a picture from you about trees being cut down.

There's a special place in my mind that we go, sometimes, Jesus and me, and one day a long while ago you showed me a formal garden there, and a row of what had been large trees, now just a row of stumps. I knew that these trees had been hard to cut down.

It had taken a lot of work, a lot of emotional effort and had taken a long time. I knew that the clear view from that garden had been hard won. 

But what a view. Now, from that lawn, I could see across an expanse of cliff-top to the glittering sea. The sunlight sparkled on the waves and the sea birds soared above. Endless sky, vast ocean.

Openness, light, air. I could breathe.

This is my spacious place.

You cut down the trees - or you are in process of cutting them down, so that I could see further and not have my view limited by the leaves and branches.  By anything standing in my way.

The tree that the neighbour cut down today definitely enables me to see further, but I feel more vulnerable too. The trees in the church picture clearly need to come down - they're oppressive. The trees in my cliff top place are gone and that's a source of joy. 

Are trees things that block a clear view of you? 

Things that maybe have been there a long time, like the one in my neighbour's garden, or the ones on the cliff top, which had left stumps wide enough to sit on?

Do the trees represent stuff that is deeply rooted and obscuring the truth? Things that get in the way?

Things that choke and suffocate, and need to be removed so that light can flood in and illuminate the shadows?

So that people can breathe again and find a way out, and people can see the beauty of the building and the people inside and find their way to the door?

Will you cut them down? Do we? 

Oh, God, I'm trying to make sense of all this, but I can't seem to see the wood for the trees. Ha ha. 

I need a bit of help. A wise person, someone skilled in interpreting Fuzzy Felt creations from the Creator. Or a bit of insight.

A nudge. 

Thank you so much for talking to me. So often I wonder that other people seem to know what you want but I am still in the dark; and then you talk to me and I look puzzled and ask you if you'd mind repeating that, more slowly this time? 

The funny thing, Lord (not funny to you, I'm sure, and I mean funny remarkable rather than funny haha) is that ladies from every different corner of our church are coming together and contributing words of scripture, things that they've prayed about or pictures that have come from you. The number of times someone has said, 'I'm not the type of person who gets things like pictures, but...' 

It has to be from you. 

So, Lord, I have no agenda. I want to hear clearly. Give me ears to hear and eyes to see and a mind that doesn't add two and two and come up with eleven. This is about you, not me.

What's with the trees?





Image credit:  axe pic (plumb axe.jpg) by taliesin.  Courtesy of Morguefile.com.  Used with permission.
Other images mine. 

Linking with Tania Vaughan's Monday Ministry (better late than never?)
Also with Jennifer Dukes Lee on Tell His Story

The Frame

My Dad was a photographer. Everywhere he went he took at least one camera and all family events are documented with pictures. He loved photography and commemorating our lives with careful images was a joy to him. 

He taught me to take photographs too. Photography appeals to my sentimental side; I'd rather have an occasion fixed and permanent. Memories can be so slippery. Camera phones are a godsend as I can whip out my phone and snap anything with a flick of thumb on touchscreen rather than use the bulky old kit that hangs heavy round the neck with zips and buttons and lens caps to negotiate. In Dad's day there were light-meters and exposures to select and all manner of variables that we don't have to worry about now. 

Swipe, click. Plug in and print. 

We used to have to wait a week to get back the pictures and see if there were any good ones. When they came back from the developers I would short through them excitedly and then show Dad my photos and he would offer advice, either in terms of composition or technical detail.  A compliment from Dad was high praise indeed. Even today, eight years after he died, when I look at my photos I try to see them through Dad's eyes. And when I stop in my tracks on the walk to school in a morning because there's something worth photographing, and my daughter rolls her eyes at the delay, I have a little smile because I used to do just the same.

Dad taught me to frame my pictures. Don't just press the button, he'd say. Look through the viewfinder.  Take a bit of time to try things out and see what works; what improves the composition.

Landscape or portrait? To zoom or not to zoom? Find a tree to frame one side of the image, or a silhouette to bring a sunset to life. Make sure there's some colour. Don't overlook the foreground; it can add depth.

Not too much sky, try not to put the horizon right in the middle.

A change of perspective can make a dull photo into a great one.

A frame makes all the difference. 

A frame can change the nature of the picture completely. A simple sketch can be transformed by the frame that it's mounted in.  It can change the whole nature of the scene. If you only see part of a picture you can misinterpret the whole thing.

With so much in life I just snap the photo without looking for a frame. I rush to interpret things as they appear to me in the heat of the moment. I am prone to anxiety and I am not by nature an optimist, so if I'm faced with troubles, then the picture I inevitably take is one of worry and negativity. I see what I think I see; I press the shutter before I've explored if there is more to the photograph than I initially thought. I am quick to assume the worst.

I don't bother looking for a frame because I'm not planning on hanging that picture on the wall. With hindsight, I might have realised that the situation was not as bad as I thought. What I feared didn't happen; and even if it did, then something better might have come out of it. 

I see a tiny part of the picture, but you see all of it, Father God. I see a fraction of an image; a piece of a vast mosaic, and I'm quite sure that taking a series of close-ups of my muddled-up life doesn't add up to the whole thing any more than a beautiful set of snowflake images can reveal the grandeur of a mountain range. 

Help me to remember that what I see as the whole picture is just a tiny part. I work in three dimensions but you hold the whole of history in your hand. 

You knew me since before the world began and you understand my place in it completely, when I am so small that the mood I'm in when I climb out of bed can affect the way I view my life. 

I can only see the horizon - you know what there is beyond.

My whole life is framed by your love for me, Lord Jesus. It changes who I am; or it would if I let it. If I only pause for a moment as I peer through the viewfinder, I might see a better picture than the obvious one. If I move the camera to the left or right, there might be things to see that change the way I view things. If I shift from telephoto to wide angle there might be something else that I should be seeing.

When I see things through the frame of who you are - who I am - things change. Suddenly that oppressive scene is not as stark or fearsome.  There is distance, mid-ground and foreground. It's not black and white any more. There is colour and detail.  Somehow the frame transforms the picture.

I can change what I see by remembering the frame. 

So next time I look at what's happening in my life, I'm going to try and remember that when bad things seem to be threatening, I am loved by the King. When the storm clouds are gathering and things are dark, that I am precious to you and you will take care of me. When I feel lost and lonely, you have promised that you will never leave me. And when things do go wrong, you have promised that you can bring good out of anything.

Even the worst picture can be improved with a frame.

The camera never lies; but it doesn't tell the whole story. 

Linking up with Nacole at Sixinthesticks for #concrete words again.