We’ve been working for the past couple of months on some renovations to the house. Today, the new windows went in.
The old windows were installed when the house was built – circa 1973 – but out here on the West Coast, things tend to last a lot longer. The old aluminum frames and single panes held up well – no problems with broken seals and fogged views to precipitate a re-fit.
These are big windows – three of them – eight feet across and three feet high. They fill the whole end and one wall of the kitchen/living room, and bring in massive amounts of light. They are one of the reasons we bought this house. We can look out and see the huge pine and cedar trees in the yard, the fabulous rocks covered with moss tumbling down the hill at the back of the house, the flowering bushes and lately, the new daffodils along the fence. In the distance is the glimmer and glitter of the lake, and the little inlet right in front of us sparkles in the morning sun.
Then the new windows went in. I stood there this morning, hardly able to believe my eyes. Everything was now in sharp focus, bright and clear, looking like a Disney 3-D movie. Details that I’d missed added new depth to the scene. How beautiful my views are now.
Today, the new windows made me realize that we often don’t know that we’re not seeing the whole picture, that what we take for granted as our lives, is only a shadow of what our world could be.We accept the fuzzy views and dulled colours – the griefs and sorrows, the burdens of serving others, the fears and doubts that come from the nightly news, the burgeoning racism that is beginning to re-appear around us, the hatred, the violence, the anguish of starving peoples and lost lives. We look out, thinking that this view will never change.”Well, what can do? we say to each other, shaking our heads.
I don’t think I’ll ever look out my new windows without thinking of how much of the beauty of our world remains hidden. I will remind myself that it’s up to me to make a difference where I am – to try to show the face of Jesus to those around me, to live my life as Jesus calls me to do, to clean the dusty film from my one small part of this world.
That’s really all any of us can do – but that’s all that we’re called to do.
more quiet spaces 