WINDOWS TO GOD MIRRORS FOR THE SOUL.

A Purchase in Berkeley

A few weeks ago, on my way to the synod assembly in Sacramento, I pulled out on Highway 80 to stop at my favorite building salvage store, Urban Ore.  An hour later, and after some texting back and forth with Pr. Ben, I walked out happily with a prairie-style window and an old mirror (trust me, you don’t want to know how I ended up fitting both into my little 2-door convertible).

Why? Because of the visual theme of our worship services for the next two months: “Windows to God Mirrors for the Soul.”

In some of the lessons during the season we meet people who are looking on to what is happening around them, as if they were looking through a window at events taking place. As we listen some of these lessons, it is like we have a “window” to God, a way of helping us to see something more, and to learn something different about God.

At other times as we explore the passages in this season, it is as though the passages reflect back to us aspects of what it is to be human, positive and negative: the lessons act like “mirrors” for the soul.

Some Sundays we will learn more about God, other Sundays we will focus more on looking at ourselves and how we can reflect more of God through our lives.

A Bit of a Parable

To help us stay on track with our visual focus, I now had a window and a mirror leaning against the shelves in my office.  Some time has passed since and the two are now on display in the narthex.  A few things happened in the meantime.

As you can imagine, a window which spent weeks, if not months outside on a salvage lot was not exactly clean.  In fact, it was dusty, grimy, and covered with cobwebs, with price stickers stuck to it. 

The process of getting it ready reminds me a bit of some of what we do to see God.  While God comes to us, reveals himself to us, and shatters our reality with his good news into our lives, it helps that we clear our vision so that we can see what God does in the world.  Thus far, I have the window a good scrub with water, detergent, and a sponge.  Unfortunately, the glass still is streaked and could benefit from another cleaning session.  Similarly, we need to clear our vision not just once, but repeatedly, over and over again.

Next Steps

So what’s next? Right now, the mirror may need some TLC and a few tacks to hold it together, but overall, it will serve its purpose in reflecting any potential users’ image back to them.  The window, on the other hand, still needs some work, if it were to serve its purpose for our worship summer season.  Thus far, all one can see when looking through it is what’s right behind it – in this case the stone wall against which it is leaning.  But a window into God? Hmmm.

Here’s what I hope to do with you over the next couple of weeks.  I hope that you will share with me (either via the note paper inserted into your bulletin or by emailing me) where you see God active in the world and how you have learnt something more, something different about God that you didn’t know before. 

Together with Liz Barton (who oversees our sanctuary décor) I plan to create collages from our collective responses that then will fill the individual panes of the window as testimony to the collective faith of the Bethel community.