A Word About… Mushrooms.
A simple and serious question today about what you may have noticed … about mushrooms.
I have a really good friend who has an amazing eye for photography. He’s not a photographer by profession. In fact, he’s a physician. But he occasionally sends me photos he’s captured with his iPhone; a picture of something he’s noticed as his day is unfolding. Sometimes, it’s a picture of a sky overhead that is so breathtakingly beautiful, he just has to pause and try to capture its drama with a photograph. Many times, he’s walking through the woods on his property and sees a mushroom or some fungus growing on the side of a tree or on top of some stump, and its shape and color almost defies description, and he feels compelled to take a picture of it. And when he sends those pictures to me, I get to enjoy what he’s noticed as he walked through the steps of his day.
When the Lord Jesus walked this earth, he often used pictures to point to the truth. He didn’t use photographs, of course. He used parables. He used word pictures to show those who were watching his life what truth really looked like. But, he declared a sad reality about some of those people who were watching. “Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand,” he said. His parables revealed truth, but only to those who leaned in to perceive. For what we might call the ‘clueless’, his stories meant nothing more than unnoticed scenery.
Sometimes I wonder if noticing is less about having eyes and more about having expectation. My physician friend isn’t really looking to find a beautiful sky every morning, so he can take a picture. But at the same time, his walk through the woods isn’t just a walk. It’s a chance to see a visible expression of the Invisible God; the God Who Wants To Be Noticed, hiding in the pattern of some brilliantly colored mushroom, or the shaft of some light falling across leaves.
The Scriptures says that some people have eyes but don’t see, ears but don’t hear. I pray God helps me avoid being one of those people. My frailty isn’t a failure of vision or sound; it’s a failure of attention. Or maybe it’s a failure of expectation. Every morning when the sun comes up, I get to choose to notice The God Who Wants To Be Noticed as the day unfolds. Will I expect the meaning hidden in the pictures of today’s moments to be ordinary, or will I allow my eyes of faith to see something extraordinary?
Only one other thought: The picture of a sunrise can help me remember that God is the creator of incredibly beautiful moments. But that sunrise is only the beginning of the story. The real reminder comes when I step into the rest of that day. Can I carry the same notice and expectation of beauty into the faces I’ll see, the conversations I’ll have, the lives that I will encounter as I walk through my day? Will I notice The God Who Wants To Be Noticed?
Grace Notes
- When was the last time you noticed something so ordinary it almost escaped your attention, yet it stayed with you?
- How might you walk through today with an expectation that God might want to be noticed in small, quiet ways?
- If eyes can look without seeing, what would it take for you to see with your heart as well as with your sight?