Windows into Advent - Day Eighteen

Reflection

It’s understanding too that the bigger picture of theology is not about what we’ve reduced it to..
I have behind me in my office a huge window and it’s a window from a house I used to live in, and this is four foot by four foot window, I am it’s old and antique and this window was my favourite part of the house that I lived in because I would look out that window and there was a street light and it was the main street of the little town and especially when it would snow, it was the most gorgeous thing you’ve ever seen.

We’d turn off all the lights of the house and stand there and look out that window and those snowflakes looked as big as my head; it was like my own private Narnia out there, it was just gorgeous.

Well one day my boys were playing and they threw this little soft cushion ball and somehow it cracked this window, just the bottom right corner of one of the panes. So I would go and look at it, and although it didn’t need to be fixed it was there. And every now and then I would go and look at this window and I would see that crack, and I would go “Aw, this is broken,” and I would go “oh wow there’s a lot of dirt between the screen and this window” and “oh man, there are thousands of dead ladybugs there, I should really get something and remove those” and “man this is bad.” 

But this was the same window that I would go to and look out on a snowy morning or snowy evening and just have my breath taken away.

What I realised is that there is such a difference between looking at a window and looking through a window.

Mark Nelson from an interview about the importance of reframing how the Gospel is understood.
https://www.soulmakers.org/bemakedo

While Nelson’s audience is largely the Evangelical church, the analogy for me has something to say about how we look at the world. Our world- even with all its cracks and brokenness, death, and need of healing- is a world still full of beauty, love, kindness and courage. Our faith ought to give us a vision of a world that the Creator loves, a world that still speaks of the presence of God within ourselves, others, and the beauty of creation.  

Scripture

For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

1 Corinthians Chapter 13 verses 12 & 13

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Image credit: Looking Out the Barn Window from Photos by Roy on Flickr found here