Yesterday, I sat in the pew between my older kids during the Remembrance Sunday service. It was one of the very few Sundays in the year when we don’t have a Family Worship Service or Sunday School, and many families stayed away, expecting that their kids would be happier elsewhere. I can’t say I blame them. The church was crowded with army folk and even the structure of the service was unfamiliar. My kids were a little lost at sea. So I made sure that they each had an excellent supply of colouring sheets and blank cards for their own creations – along with the very best Sunday School markers.
Blue decided to draw a picture for his little brother. I asked a couple of questions, and he told me a little bit about it, but it only left me wondering more. Maybe that’s just a sign of good art.
I want to share it here because, for me, it seems to illustrate a thread in this week’s lectionary passages. We’ll be reading the parable of the talents from Matthew and a section from the letter to the Thessalonians which encourages us to “keep awake.” In both readings, there is a call to be watchful and active. To be persistent and aware. To keep at it. It might be dark or the way may be uncertain. Perhaps the master is a long way off or the day is not yet here. But there is a calling to be in the moment and to keep looking.
Blue drew a big ocean, all scribbled with blue and topped with big waves. There’s a boat there, too, but the boat is small and the sailor is smaller. He told me he wasn’t sure who the sailor was. Maybe Noah or maybe no one. But whoever it is, he is calling out across the water. Hallooooo. His voice is blown away by the wind and curls in on itself as it goes. He told me that there were fifty Os so the voice went on for a long time. But up above his head, where he couldn’t quite see yet, there was God.
Now, I didn’t know this was God. I couldn’t really tell, but Blue told me it was. God looks a bit jaggedy, a bit like a cloud. There might be an eye in there or there might not. I’m not sure. And God is halloooooing, too, just like the sailor. Except God’s halloo reaches the sailor, its last o sitting right on the top of his head, even though he’s hallooing in the other direction. And God’s halloo is in mirror writing.
Isn’t this just the way it is? We try and we struggle to stay awake and keep the boat going. We try to find the courage to risk what we’ve been given, a little bit of money, a talent or two to help us sail the seas. It is a struggle, but we work against the wind and with the wind and then we grow tired and maybe we wonder if we’ve lost our way. So we end up hallooing out into the dark, out over the waves, calling for the God who has called us to work and be watchful. Maybe we end up worrying that our voices are only echoing back on themselves over all those rough, dark seas. Yet, somewhere close, so close above us, God is there in unexpected ways, hallooing right back. And God’s voice find us. God’s voice always finds us. I wondering if there is something in our own wandering hallooing that might help us to hear when God’s voice comes to us over the waves, to help us to listen when it settles within us.
