Day Twenty Nine - Looking forward, looking wider

We have all had to make changes to the way we live. Personally I have felt that the world has got so much smaller. The way the Covid-19 Pandemic spread so quickly and widely has shown us this, making it difficult for us to look wider or even to look forward with any certainty. It has felt a little as though we have been in a vacuum.

Lent gives us an opportunity to look to the past but also to look forward and think about the world we want to see in the future and our role in this. During Jesus’s ministry he often recalled the past, but he gave us reassurance and hope to help us look forward into the future whatever we are facing. “For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen”. 2 Corinthians 4:17-18

During Lent many people give something up, but I prefer to try to take up new things and to make changes to the way I think and do things.

Recently I have been sculpting little hedgehogs out of clay. When I began to work the clay, I was surprised to find that the image I had in my mind of a hedgehog was not actually good enough to shape a good replica. After numerous attempts to make one I had to admit that I had missed out a stage in the process. I didn’t have a clear enough image in my mind to reproduce it, reminding me of the verses in Jeremiah about the potter and the clay. “The vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as seemed good to him.” Jeremiah 18:4

So, I had to stop and go back a stage, looking up images of hedgehogs and looking at them more closely. Then I was ready to start again with the clay, working it, sculpting, baking, and adding paints to bring it ‘alive’. Each stage of the process is as important as the rest, as is the order in which we carry them out.

Sometimes we are too focused on the end game. We are often impatient, too quick to try to reach a conclusion or resolution. We often attempt to miss out a stage to get to the end quicker, or rush a stage taking less care than we should, only to find we have spoilt the finished item due to a lack of care.

We also sometimes pre-empt the conclusion or what we want to see or hear. Sometimes the result isn’t what we anticipated and maybe not what we wanted. Sometimes we try to ignore the guidance and advice we are given on the way.

During his ministry Jesus often replied to questions by asking a question, or by saying something we hadn’t expected. He doesn’t do this because he doesn’t know the answer, but to get us to think deeper or to get us to act or respond differently in order for us to grow and be better Christians in the future.

Having made the hedgehogs, I have enjoyed sharing them with others, sending them to people I haven’t been able to see during this last year of restrictions, letting them know that I haven’t forgotten them and that they are in my thoughts and prayers.

The activity has encouraged me to consider small mammals, especially hedgehogs, their habitat and what I could do about helping with their survival.

“For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him”. Colossians 1:16

I remembered that in the past I had saved old newspapers, taking bundles of them up to the local hedgehog sanctuary, where they used them in the boxes for the recovering hedgehogs they were nursing back to full health, so I have re-established that link.

Before the pandemic I visited a friend’s house and was fascinated to see that she had adapted her garden to be more hedgehog friendly with gaps in her hedge, little paths around the garden and rockery and places for them to hibernate in the winter.

Whether we are animal lovers or otherwise we all have a responsibility to preserve God’s kingdom, playing our part in preserving our environment and the animals and plants in it, because the loss of them has huge implications to us if we don’t.

So, let us give thanks to God for all we have in the natural world that is there for us to enjoy.

Kathy Shaw