'Can't see the wood for the trees' is one of those sayings that easily rolls of the tongue when things are not particularly straight forward. Yet, as I found myself stumbled around a wood looking for a path, the saying took on a different meaning.
Having taken a few days off to regather after the busyness of Easter and try not think about what is ahead in the next few weeks, I took the opportunity to do a bit of walking. With my map reading skills being not as good as they could be and fairly indistinct paths, it was surprisingly easy to close my mind off; for a while at least. However, it was not long before my mind drifts back to what I was trying to escape from. But as I walked through a wood the other day, looking for markers that the map said were there but all I could see were trees, the wood suddenly opened up before me, as did my thoughts.
If you stand still long enough in a wood, in a fairly short period of time you no longer just see trees. Suddenly you are no longer surrounded by birdsong without sight of its source; there are wrens, robins, finches flitting from branch to branch, stopping briefing to whistle a call. There is a scurrying in the undergrowth and then a dart of grey as a squirrel running up a nearby tree. From behind a clump of gorse strolls a pony happily grazing and seemingly oblivious to your presence. With very little effort, at least on your part, the wood soon shows itself not just to be tree upon tree, but so much more.
And in that moment, I may not have found the fence I was looking for, but I did find a bit of meaning.
During Lent I thought a lot about waiting and how the Christian calendar has a number of periods of time which we could easily class as waiting times. But why? If we are to be missionaries and evangelists, living out the Gospel, that's all about action. However, do we not say 'actions speak louder than words', yet, how often do we do things without thinking them through first? God does use these moment, but there is always the encouragement to wait on God first. In waiting, what our actions will be become better defined as we begin to see more than what is just before us. We begin to see the wood and not just the trees.
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| 'Deep in the Wood' E Colechin 2015 |
