Re-framing The Picture

Yesterday for my lunch whilst I was eating an orange I swallowed a pip. I had a flashback to when I was a child. I remember being told that if I swallowed an apple pip, an apple tree would grow inside me. It was a scary picture; I was very careful when eating apples.

As time went on I had to ‘reframe the picture’… what I feared might be true, probably wasn’t…

Yesterday I was reading Patricia St John. She paints the picture… working as a medical missionary in Africa after the War. She talks about postwar colonialism, ‘unconsciously patronising, seeing themselves, because as yet no other vision had been given, as white beneficent chiefs among simple Africans…’

She describes this ‘other vision’  as ‘an equal brotherhood of black and white’; she reframes the picture… ‘a new concept of fellowship that would override caste, code, background, race, colour and prejudice. It was the only real answer in the world to war, hatred, racial superiority and apartheid.’

Yesterday a group of us were reflecting on big, difficult events that have changed the picture of our lives… Bereavements, life-changing illness, personal failures and disappointments, broken relationships, apparently unanswered prayers… Some were talked about with difficulty, some were private, painful and kept to ourselves.

Scars and wounds that shape our life’s picture… sometimes pictures can be given fresh perspective by reframing. Others are – for now – stuck in an old frame.

This morning I’m musing on my own life’s picture… son, student, Christian, husband, teacher, father, church leader, musician, grandfather, friend… some parts of the picture have changed, some remained constant…

As the picture changes has the frame changed too? I remember St Paul’s words: ‘And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.’

My frame has always included faith, hope and love… perhaps the frame has changed as I understand, experience and practice them in greater depth and maturity.