Light and Shadow

Light and Shadow

I was walking recently in the mountains and the sun was shining at an angle on the hillside opposite – casting shadows of the low drystone walls, trees & barns transforming what might have been a fairly uninteresting uniform hillside into a picture full of texture and beauty.

A couple of days earlier I was browsing though my son’s book on digital photography. It has 2 shots of the same scene. One shot on a cloudy day and one on a sunny day with strong shadows.

For me, life is a little like the hillside or the attractive photo. It has light and shadow. Often we focus on the light, though without shadow the light wouldn’t be meaningful. Yet how often do I expect life to be in with dark – to be all light and no shadow. Shadow for me represents the difficult times, the sufferings in life, the pain, yet without it we would not appreciate the light and we would not become the people that we can be.

In the Bible there is a metaphor of gold being refined (purified) by fire. (Zechariah 13:9 ) Fire though painful and difficult brings around the transformation of the impure Gold into something pure and of value. As a Christian I am to expect suffering… though often in practice I expect to avoid it!

So this challenges me to view what I call difficulties in a different light, to ask myself if I can appreciate them (if not at the time then after) and not to ask God to teach me though them.

What could you learn from your ‘shadows’ by looking at them from a different angle?

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Trust who..?

Who do you trust?

I have been wondering about that recently. What is the relationship between relationship with another and trusting in them? If we do not trust anyone does this lead to disillusionment in the whole human race?

I have known people that have been really let down when their trust has been betrayed. The result?… a drawing back from real relationships with others and an avoidance of vulnerability. So what is the way through this seemingly irresolvable dilemma?

Looking to the Master… Jesus had really intimate relationships with others. Yes he was vulnerable with them, yes he shared his life with them. The critical thing was that he depended not on those relationships but on the relationship he had with the Father and this is the model that I now seek to emulate.
If our confidence is in God alone and this becomes a springboard to have really meaningful relationships with others then this gives us liberty to really ‘go for’ those relationships irrespective of what might happen…
In nlp terms modelling Chirst in this specific can lead us to greater fulfilling service.

But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all men. He did not need man’s testimony about man, for he knew what was in a man. John 24-25

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