An object lesson

God occasionally teaches me things through object lessons; metaphors with something that I can see, hear, or feel.

Once a few years ago, I had a truly terrible day and I was in the foulest mood ever. I was too thoroughly miserable to go home, so instead, I went to the park and sat down in the middle of a rarely-used football field and refused to leave until God spoke to me somehow.
After about an hour, I was getting tetchy. I'd been staring at everyone to cross that field, just waiting for an epiphany to strike, but none had. Finally, sat there on the grass, I noticed a man walking his dog. I watched for a while as the little dog followed her master closely, occasionally running off to explore but never going too far. It wasn't until they got closer that I noticed that the man kept talking to the dog, calling her. I went and sat on a bench at the edge of the park and waited for them to pass me. As they did, the man said to me, "I have to keep calling her, she's completely blind!"

I was really struck by that. I had been stressing so much over my future, worrying about the fact that I couldn't see what was coming in my life, and here was a real-life parable that seemed so clear to me. I felt that God was telling me not to worry that I couldn't see ahead, and that if I just follow His voice I'll be ok. I needed to hear that.

So today, a similar thing happened. You might know that I've been struggling lately. Well earlier, I was sat in the student union bar looking at the ceiling at a light, and the light was very slowly changing colour.
I read in Velvet Elvis the other day (a great book by Rob Bell) that colours fade in the memory. They tested it, and people always made colours brighter, more vivid, to try to match the hue that they'd seen only moments before. So when you stare at a fixed colour, it becomes less impressive.
That wasn't happening here; the constant colour changes - blue, aqua, green, yellow, red, purple, blue - kept every colour fresh and bright and new. And once again, my object lesson instincts kicked in. And I realised that my relationship with God is going to keep changing because it's alive. It's an active, dynamic thing. A relationship is never something you just Have, like an ornament in a glass case; and in God's case maybe the intention is to keep me engaging with Him rather than being passive. So maybe I should stop thinking of my spiritual life in terms of 'highs and lows', but instead be thankful for the beautiful, strobing, ever-new nature of what God is to me.

Interesting thing of the day: The moon landings were Faked! No, really!! I mean it!!!1one