My vision with some help

With all the difficult tasks my aging parents might need my relatively young arms to tackle, their request for this visit was to beautify the yellow blobs of hardened foam oozing from the woodpecker holes in the tree. My dad, in his ongoing attempt to keep wildlife and decay from snatching civilization, had filled in the large holes created by the hungry woodpeckers. He had used a bright yellow foam which not only clashed with the stately grey of the bark but also expanded to a pendulous unsightly blob. On two trees were two large bright blobs, each with another smaller blob above or below. My assignment was to paint the blobs to make them into an artistic creation, something to placate the neighbors and prevent little children from passing by and snickering.
I know my Dad, so with great foresight asked,"What is your vision for the blobs? "
"I don't want to influence you," he assured me, "Make it what you see fit."

So I set out with a ladder, my oil paints, and a variety of brushes. Dad had advised that the first tree blobs looked a little like a small four legged creature. I just didn't see that
I saw a bird holding a broken egg. I painted the bird clutching the oozing egg to her breast. This blob was my expression of all the cruel realities of nature, and angst of motherhood. Dad came out and watched for a while, telling me perhaps the feet clutching the so called egg needed better definition. And while I was at it, perhaps the egg didn't really look like an egg since eggs are not so round. But then he left and I suspect was wondering if he should have just had me vacuum the living room instead.

I finished the bird and moved on to the second set of blobs. At first I had seen a toucan in these blobs but as I examined them more closely, a horse appeared in my head.

Dad wandered out again. The large pickle shaped blob had been painted like a horse snout
Above it but not connected to it was a small round blob. I had painted two eyes on that and then painted two ears right on the bark itself as I had no more blobs to work with.
"What happened to the toucan? " asked Dad.
"I don't know. When I started I saw a horse instead."
"But the eyes aren't connected to the nose! "
"Well use your imagination. "
"You need something between them connecting them."
"Dad, I had rather limited material to work with here! "
"Fine, its lovely! " but his face was troubled.
As we were watching television later, he exclaimed out of the blue, "How about a nose piece like horse bridles have? "
"But those aren't right under the eyes, " I said.
"We could buy more foam, " he said, " Fill in the gap."
"I could make a duck tape bridle, " suggested Asherel, "You need to fill in the gap. "
So Asherel made the bridle and I nailed it in place. She had made the nose piece by rolling several thicknesses of duct tape.

But then the painted bark to suggest ears no longer looked right. I made duck tape ears and tacked them on.

Dad wandered out again.
"Do you think the nosepiece is too wide for the face? " he asked, as I was putting away the ladder. I controlled the few spurts of steam wafting from my ears.
"Dad that is about 2 inches thick duck tape. I would need a saw to cut it down! "
"Oh... well then it is fine. It's lovely! " but as he walked away his face looked troubled.

So I put the ladder back under the tree and got some large pruning shears. I pulled out the nails and spent ten minutes sweating and grunting as I slowly mangled a cut through the thick wads of duck tape. Then I tacked it back up.

As I was folding the ladder, Asherel wandered out.
"That's not what horse ears look like, " she said.
I unfolded the ladder and sat down. "I'll wait here."
She returned a few minutes later with two perfect duck tape ears. I tacked them up.

As we all gathered to head off to lunch, all four of us gazed at the horse.
"It looks like a donkey, " said Mom.
"Fine, its a donkey! " I cried.
Fortunately they all agreed it was a lovely donkey and no one had any more input into "my" vision.

1 Corinthians 3:6-14 NIV

I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and they will each be rewarded according to their own labor. For we are co-workers in God's service; you are God's field, God's building. By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as a wise builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should build with care. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person's work. If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward.

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Visions

There was a large spooky forest that bumped up to our backyard in the house where I spent my first five years.
My earliest clear memory was of that forest, and the frightening thing that emerged from it one day as I was playing in the backyard. My mother used to tell us it was time to go out and play, send us out back, and then lock the door. It was Enforced Playtime til her eyes stopped rattling in her head. While children are, as everyone knows, a source of great comfort and joy, four children under age 6 can stretch the definition of joy til it is almost like torture. I loved being outside, but the spooky forest really scared me. It was big, and dark and menacing and I knew that very large and dangerous things lived there. So I would stick close to the house and play with less scary things like the snakes under the doorstep.

Most of the time my siblings were near, so the forest didn't hold the terror it could have, but on the day of my vision , I was all alone. I don't know where my siblings were off to, probably stealing the farmer's corn and outrunning his shotgun, which was another favorite memory. (Well, ok, I am not quite certain I remember him actually shooting, but he did scream at us....I think.)

I was happily feeding apples to the snake, whom I called Slidey, when I saw something on the edge of the forest out of the corner of my eye. There was a lot of shouting and thrashing of underbrush, and horrible growling noises. I raced to the door, which of course was locked, and pounded on it. Mom's policy was the door remained locked for at least an hour, on a sliding scale
of time based on how long it had taken her to get us into all our outdoor clothes. If snowpants and boots and hats and scarves and mittens were involved for all four of us, we could count on being locked out til the next meal. This was a summer day, but nonetheless, Enforced Playtime was not over, and so children were still required to fend for themselves, unless "we saw blood".

I cringed against the door and opened one eye to see what unspeakable creepy thing had been raising the ruckus. It was then that I saw, clear as day, a large bear break out of the forest. Well, actually he did not break out of the forest.... he rolled out of the forest. It was a fearsome large brown bear, at least as tall as a large man, on roller skates. I huddled against the door, whispering, "Mom! Mommy... let me in. There is a bear!"
Fortunately, the bear stayed along the edge of the forest, and was actually skating quite well considering the less than ideal surface of tree roots and rutted ground. Why was a bear roller skating...? At the time, it did strike me as odd, but then the answer became clear. A farmer with a pitchfork burst out of the forest waving his arms and giving chase. It was obvious the bear needed to roller skate to outpace the man. I watched in amazement as they raced across the far backyard, and then both disappeared again back into the forest.

To this day, when my family feels I am not being quite accurate in my rendition of events, they will say, "Like the bear on roller skates?" and then smirk. I get the distinct impression that no one believes me. My blessed mother turns 78 on Valentine's Day, but I am sure she too remembers opening the door to the hysterical child telling her there was a bear on roller skates in our forest.

I have never been able to discern what message God was sending with that vision. Try as hard as I can, I cannot make sense of it. Surprisingly, bears are mentioned in the Bible. When the prophet Elisha is taunted by some youths who call him "bald head!", bears come out of the forest and maul them. Those bears were not roller skating. In Isaiah 59:11, the prophet mourns the state of a sinful people, lost in their sins, who don't know where to turn to find solace and atonement-
"We all growl like bears;
we moan mournfully like doves.
We look for justice, but find none;
for deliverance, but it is far away. "

That might explain the vision of the bear... God was reminding me of the horror of sin.... but the rolling part still flummoxed me. Roller skates had not been invented during Bible times, but there are zillions of references to things rolling. And amazingly, the rolling is usually a good thing, except in a few places like when God tells Jeremiah to tell his people He will "roll you off a cliff" because they refuse to repent. But in Joshua 5:9, God "rolls" away the reproach of Egypt from his people, and the most happy rolling of all occurs in the Gospels when the angel rolls away the large stone to reveal Jesus' empty tomb.

Of course, sometimes a bear on roller skates is just a bear on roller skates.