An Obscure View

Bit by bit, the kitchen update I started last November is progressing. I’ve replaced the white faux wood blinds with bamboo shades. I love the natural look and the warmth they bring, but best of all, I love that I can see outside even when they’re closed. When it’s just too hot to be in the garden, I still enjoy a filtered view of green, splashes of color, shapes and outlines, and flashes of movement as birds feed and fly around all day long. The garden is ethereally visible, separated by a thin barrier that, in some sense, unites both my inside and outside worlds. I feel like I’m in two worlds at the same time.

Gazing through to the outside, I’m reminded of the two worlds we live in as people of faith: our earthly world and our heavenly world. It’s easy to get lost in the cool comfort indoors: watching a show, doing the laundry, reading and writing, but outside is a world alive with living things that need attention and tasks to be done. Life inside is fairly easy and comfortable—but outside is where I connect most deeply with what is real and true. It’s an atmosphere that begs for human interaction with God’s expression of love through nature.

This two-world experience sharpens my awareness that, though I exist in a physical world, alongside it is a supernatural world just as real. Just like the shades that divide and filter my vision from inside to the outside, there are things that keep me from seeing that supernatural world clearly. And so, as continually as I’m able, I ask for the gift of Faith. I come to the Light so that the things that keep me from it can be exposed. I come to the Fountain to bathe and drink. I come to the table and eat the Bread of Life for strength to do my part in the cooperative work that is “outside”. I want to co-labor with God, doing his work in the Kingdom, which exists alongside the physical world—a world I see all-too-clearly and so often want to ignore or run away from... because it’s much more comfortable inside.

But the garden is out there waiting for me and I’m looking forward to cooler weather so I can spend more time taking care of it and enjoying it. I water, weed, mulch, and feed, but an invisible power gives it Life. Right now, the obscure view of it from within my cool refuge encourages me that this life-giving power is always there...always available to draw from, always with me, as he is with you.