Butterflies in the garden around our cottage search till they find nectar! This butterfly above was on the Ixora plant for about fifteen minutes visiting each of the elevan bunches of flowers during that time. It was an intent to find.
During the last four days, I had an experience of going into our nutmeg grove to find the fallen nutmeg fruits. Often they remain hidden under the fallen yellowish leaves. The leaves look yellow similar to the colour of the nutmeg fruit. The search involved moving leaves to look for nutmeg fruits hidden under them.
It was while engaged in the search for nutmeg fruits under the fallen leaves, I remembered a parable Jesus of Nazareth spoke about a woman who meticulously searched for her lost coin, which appears in the gospel of Luke in the New Testament of the Bible, chapter 15 verses 8 to 10.
Jesus in His narration of this parable, raised a question: ' ...If she has ten silver coins and loses one of them, does not light a Lamp and sweep and search carefully until she fonds it?'
I found the lighting of a lamp, in that parable a pointer towards a metaphorical meaning.
The woman needed a lamp to aid her search.
A lamp sheds light and dispels darkness!
It is with the light of that lamp the woman would sweep the house!
There is sight and vision.
We search with our sight to find. The sight confines us to the immediate proximity of the visual field.
The vision is beyond the immediate field which the eyes cannot reach normally.
The woman needed a lamp to search the house. The house to me symbolised the being that each of us is in our life. Our interior being is a space with shades, shadows and sacred places. The shades and shadows are places hidden to us. They are concealed memories of hurt, disappointment, anxiety, longing, struggle...! They are submerged in the mass of favourite thoughts that we entertain.
It is this message we get from the prayer of the Psalmist, David in Psalm in 139 : 'Search me O God and know my heart, try me and know my anxious thoughts, and see if there be any hurtful way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way' (v 23-24).
Beyond the sight we can see, there is vision which is enabled by the lamp. That lamp is God Himself according to the experience of David in the above psalm.
The search therefore has two dimensions. We make an interior tour of our lives and what we come across is what we are comfortable to receive about ourselves. Our view of ourselves is often a glorified self image. The shades, shadows, and sacred spaces within us become know to us only when the lamp, God Himself, guides us further into our depth within, where we encounter more truths about ourselves, which need healing and restoration along with experiences worth celebrating.
Mary allowed God to make her ready to become a mother to Jesus, when the angel spoke to hear that ' And behold, you will conceive in your womb, and bear a son and you shall name Him Jesus' (Luke 1:310. to which Mary responded, '...be it done to me according to your word..' (v38).
God visits us to give us a vision beyond the sight or insight we have for ourselves.
Professor V Benjamin, when he returned from the UK with the fellowship of the royal college to start his much cherished practice in the department of medicine, was requested by the administration of the Christian Medical College to head the department of the community medicine. Against considerable disappointment, he started to work in the sixties. What we see today is a highly rated CHAD hospital and commendable health indices in the Kaniyampadi block, as a result of that vision Dr Benjamin was enabled to receive from the light of the lamp of God in his life. He saw a career in general medicine; but God guided him to receive a vision for a community!
While talking to him about this experience once in 1981, during the annual sports event at the Oval grounds, where he came running with the torch to light the lamp to inaugurate the sports day, he told me, 'When God shows the way, it goes beyond what one has desired for'!
A Butterly searches and finds nectar. A woman searches and finds the lost coin. A physician receives a vision different from his personal choice.
I sometimes wonder if the current trend among health care professionals is to strive to achieve rather than search to find!
M.C.Mathew(text and photo)
Very thought provoking. Apt for a baccalaureate lecture. Thank you Sir
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