Tuesday 18 February 2014

Lost in Wonder?

I made a mistake. I packed this lot up too early, about 3 months too early it turns out.

Once I got back from the US and my interview for Williamsburg UMC there was a lot of uncertainty about when I'd be moving and when I'd be finishing in Toton. Add in the excitement of a new chapter ready to be read and I started taking the layout to bits as it's the easiest way to get it across the pond. The actual trains have been packed carefully in one piece but almost everything else is in bits to be rebuilt later this year in an extended layout, all in the boxes on the left.

I only realised the full impact of that decision tonight though when at a church meeting we were asked to identify three or four things that were really important to us. I listed, in no particular order, Lego, my Bible, photography and worship. (Don't panic family and friends, you are all still very important too!)

As I reflected on it, I realised how much I'd missed building and tinkering over the last few months and how I'd not been "lost" in the act of creating a new layout, model or whatever, and that alongside it the moment of being lost in wonder, lost in praise as this song puts it.

We can all identify occasions I'm sure as people of faith when we've been so absorbed in worship that we don't notice anything else around us, we're so overwhelmed by God's amazing grace and love that the world could stop turning and we wouldn't notice. I've had them at big worship events, in church, on a mountainside or beach, and also when totally immersed in either taking pictures or building Lego. Those two activities are personal acts of worship for me, activities that help me honour God with my spare time and creativity, and hopefully in different ways, share them with others.

And so, having packed it all up months ago, I've not been building, and with the weather as rough as it has been, not taking photos either, and so have slipped into laziness and wasteful use of my time, time that hasn't been honouring of God. Sometimes when I build, and it can be for 8 or 10 hours on a day off, I have music playing, sometimes I consciously leave the room silent apart from the plastic noise of the bricks. Either way, God speaks and refreshes and I experience the joy of creating something.

There is a wonder in building, of watching the image that's in my head grow and evolve as brick after brick is put in place. There is a wonder in people's face when they see a new layout for the first time. There is a wonder and a mystery about God that we sometimes try and restrict to our human understanding and so hold back from being lost in wonder and the state of not understanding. However you do it, let me encourage you to spend time being lost in wonder in the presence of our amazing God who took on human form and died to show us how much he loves us. I certainly intend to do more of it, though for a few months more I'll have to be patient and wait to get the bricks out again.

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