In the weeks since Nathaniel was born, Jane and I keep seeing buggies everywhere we go. I’m sure they weren’t there a couple of months ago, but now we see them round ever corner! We’ve even got to the point of walking along and just saying ‘buggy’ (no points involved, sadly).
It’s amazing how simply thinking more about something makes it pop out of the background noise more clearly. Another example in the last week has been two ideas that resonated with me from my reading of Kevin Vanhoozer – ‘translating’ and ‘improvisation’. As I’m sitting in a tutor’s office at college, the first book I glance at on his shelf is ‘Improvisation: the Drama of Christian Ethics‘ (I’ve not read it, so don’t take that as a recommendation!) I get home, click on a couple of tweets and start reading a sample chapter from Krish Kandiah of his new book, Route 66. It’s all about reading and understanding the Bible and it seems very helpful. In the preview chapter he talks about translation as not just how we move from ancient texts to modern vernacular, but further as how we put it into place in our own lives. As soon as these ideas take root in your brain you start seeing them everywhere! (And I suppose I should get on and write about those two as well…)
Sometimes seeing what God’s doing is exactly the same – when we’re engaged in it and it’s on our minds, it’s easy to spot all these different things and see God behind them. When we’re thinking about other things, it’s those other things that dominate what we see. We talk about scientific observation being theory laden – on a day-by-day basis this means that we see what we look for. So I see buggies everywhere, but I know what I’d rather be seeing!