...patterns

Patterns are part of our lives whether we feel the desire to rebel or not.

Our world has been created with a season or pattern for most things. Night follows day, winter follows summer and our lives have a pattern from birth to death. However, we each have the ability to influence the patterns and details of our lives don’t we? But what if we believe that God has a pattern and plan for our life created from the very beginning?

Patterns, shapes, forms are a part of me – how I see and interact with the world. I never simply see what is in the foreground but also see what is around and behind that. What animate shapes can I see within inanimate objects and what shapes and patterns does the space around a form create. Seeing the background is often as important to me as the main feature, the subtle, the hidden, the mistakes…

And I think this is how I feel about life too…

A pattern or blueprint is all well and good – God had a blueprint for creating mankind but I wonder how much our individual uniqueness is our own deviance from God’s pattern or whether our wondering from the pattern is also part of God’s plan?

To me patterns, blueprints and plans initially seem dull…

My immediate reaction to following a pattern is a sense that I am creating something that is not unique or individually crafted into being. The roughly hewn clay pot that contains the fingerprints of the creator that you can see and touch, feels more real than the fine china pottery that is meticulously and precisely produced to a set pattern.

Discarding the ‘less than pattern-perfect’ even extends to the deselection of fruit and vegetables that don’t conform to the supermarkets rigid patterns of accepting standards.

God may well have created patterns within our lives and our world but the free will we are each given enables us to have the freedom to explore and be creative. Perhaps to explore and become the best example of our own blueprint.

Biblically we know that Jesus was certainly not the blueprint King that God’s people expected. And whilst we know that Jesus spent time in prayer, I wonder how prescriptive God’s pattern for Jesus’ life was? Surely to experience life in all its human frailty, Jesus also needed to create, see and recognise his own life patterns?

So maybe a pattern can be a good starting point but by finding the time to explore what is not in front of our eyes, to look for a pattern where none should exist or in looking beyond the foreground, an all together different pattern might emerge.

Learn to appreciate the less than perfect patterns and in creating the You that God desires, don’t be scared to occasionally draw outside of the lines.