A HOPELESS MUDDLE? OR A RICH PATTERN?

So many good and exciting things go on in this parish during August that the organisers in our community must be quite exhausted. As I write, all the preparations are going on for the Beeston Castle Fete. During the first week of the month there was the children's Holiday Club, and what a success that was!

A week later, I went to the Bunbury Summer Art Exhibition. Another amazing success! I found that I knew most of those who were organising it, and I actually know some of the local artists, too, not to mention recognising most of the members of the Bunbury Gardening Club depicted in Denise Bates's "Setting Up the Show".

One cannot say this of some art exhibitions where the paintings on display are so much harder to "read" that one almost needs a course in art in order to be qualified to attend. Have you ever stood in front of an acclaimed work of art and wondered privately what on earth it is all about? You can't see anything in it. You even wonder whether it has been hung the right way up. Yet all the knowledgeable people around you are saying how clever or how moving or how beautiful it is.

Not long ago, I was invited to see a beautiful piece of embroidery. On the table was laid out a fine piece of cloth, covered, I could see, with bright silks of many colours. But to me it was meaningless, a hopeless muddle. My hostess came to the rescue when she told me that I was looking at the wrong side; she turned the cloth over, and there revealed was the most exquisite embroidered depiction of a garden and peacocks. It was amazing, and was indeed beautiful.

How easy it is for us to look at something without really understanding it just because we are looking at it "from the wrong side". We pass judgment that it is "just a mess" or "a hopeless muddle", and walk away from it, declaring that those who like it or praise it "must be nuts". We blame the artist or the embroideress or the writer or the piece of work when really the fault is our own ignorance.

We need an interpreter. (Remember the impor- tance of the Interpreter in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress?) We need someone who can explain the painting, turn over the cloth to show us the wonderfully embroidered picture, teach us what the piece of writing means.

"I can't see anything in it! It's just a hopeless muddle!" should never be the final word. It should be the first utterance, the cry for understanding and insight.

Things happen to us in the course of our lives that find us equally bewildered and lost, times when everything seems to go wrong and we can't understand why. There seems to be no pattern or purpose.

Others whose lives have already run a long course look at the world and see only the changes that have taken place in their lifetimes, changes in the way new generations lead their lives and in attitudes and behaviour. There is so much that seems to run contrary to the standards to which they themselves were brought up that they sometimes feel they can no longer understand even how to live!

We all need an interpreter. Children, still with so much to learn, need their teachers. We, having learned, but still sadly ignorant, need our teachers too.

There is always the One who does understand, who sees and knows the whole of the rich pattern that He designed and, with our help, is still creating. Put out your hand and go along with Him.

Trust in God. Come to church, and we will all try to learn what life is really all about.

Rick