Recently I spent a week at a conference center at Lake Tahoe. The beauty of the lake and all of its complex colors evoked awe in me once again. This year Lake Tahoe is particularly stunning with the snow capped mountains surrounding the multi-hued water. Sometimes I pretend I am a photographer and I try to imagine what shots I would try to get and why. One of the reasons I do that now and then is to get myself to notice things I might not otherwise notice.
While I was at the lake, I was invited to go on a boat ride. The driver of the boat took us in to the Tahoe Keys which is a winding pathway of houses right on the water, most of which have docks that extend from their backyards and lead to their array of watercraft. One of the mind-pictures I took was of a very expensive house that for some reason had the entire neighborhood’s goose population. I kid you not, there must have been 20 or 30 geese that were gathered for a convention in this one backyard and had perhaps been gathered continuously for a while. The goose poop was thick enough to actually be considered mounds or hills. I could barely see the name of the boat written in beautiful script on the back because there were several geese who had made that back ledge their roosting spot. If there had been a “for sale” sign in the backyard that I could have photographed with the geese in the foreground, it would have been a great shot! As we drove away in the boat, I couldn’t help but think that when we are not present in one way or another, poop happens!
Another mind picture I captured was of a tree that looked like it had been struck by lightning. The trunk was enormous and the top half of the tree was missing. At first, I didn’t notice it was missing its top half. It wasn’t until I had walked past it and then turned around that I realized a huge branch had grown out of its side and then up way past where the trunk had been severed and had become the new top of the tree. My initial sight of the tree was of a huge tree with beautiful green branches that stretched like a cat in sunshine up in to the blue sky above. When I finally saw the edge of the trunk and realized the tree was actually just an extension of the branch growing out of the side of the trunk, I was inordinately happy. What I realized was that the tree was a perfect example of how we can go through radical changes and disruptions and traumatic events and then adapt to our new reality and grow even stronger and more beautiful than before the radical change.
Jesus told stories in word pictures about what the world was like in the new realm that God was creating. Jesus was able to take images and experiences from everyday life and then use those to illustrate the new world that God was creating where all would be loved, accepted, and called to seek justice. I wonder what Jesus would have said about goose poop and a tree that loses half of itself. What do you think the realm of God is like? How would you describe it in word pictures? Try to slow down enough to notice some things you haven’t noticed before in the world around you. What do you see? What is the realm of God like in your words or pictures?