When I was out just after breakfast on a calm and clear October morning recently, I was struck by the contrasts in the scene depicted in this photograph.
There was little cloud cover but what there was ranged in colour. The foreground of recently worked cereal stubble hid the newly drilled crop and dominated, but did not entirely overshadow, the green of the road verge and fields beyond. The starkness of the dead tree set off the living leaf cover on the hedgerow beyond it.
Next time I walk this way something will have changed. The sky will inevitably be different. The foreground will gradually grow greener while the hedgerow browns into autumn and winter sleepiness.
Nothing will change the tree. It has been there for many years to my memory. Sometimes as on the morning referred to, a lonely crow or rook (I am not good on the difference) will perch on a branch; another time pigeons will be using it as a useful vantage point as they look for their next mouthful of food.
The dead tree is beautiful in its way because it sets off the contrasts arising from the alterations of everything living around it.
And so it is with us. We are offered a living faith which changes and updates with every new day. John Keble wrote in a hymn: ‘New every morning is the love my waking and uprising prove’.
Look at the tree differently. Stop seeing something that is a tragic reflection of disease, or just in the way, and view it as a sculpture created by God and set in his landscape. If you can see it like that you have an illustration of how to view God’s love too. Not something that is of marginal relevance aside from Sunday morning but constant, solid, unchanging with the ability to enhance the way we see the life of the world around.
A Prayer
Loving God, help me to absorb your love that I may see with different eyes the vibrancy of all that surrounds me. Help me to live your love so that those around me may not notice me but have their own senses enhanced. Lord, make me solid and reliable, dependable and resilient as I realise the truth that you are always there for me, new every morning.
Amen.