Mosaic of Life
Some time ago, I did a mosaic workshop – my first. I went with a few possible designs, picked one, hoping perhaps to come home with a trivet. Our tutor was excellent but I still didn’t expect it to be easy. It wasn’t but while it wasn’t killingly hard, it was a challenge. As I went on, I realised that doing mosaics is a pretty good metaphor for much of life.
We start with a good design but as we choose and cut the tiles to fit, we find ourselves hedged by the limitations of the materials. Tiles are shifted around as we try to capture the sense of the picture and maintain a sense of flow. While fingers can be caught in the cutters or cut on the sharp edges of the tiles, the most deflating part is that in looking too closely at the work one loses the idea of picture as a whole. This makes one too critical which then deflates enthusiasm, leading to a sense of defeat and the temptation to give up. The trick to mosaics is, while giving care to the detail, to let the sense of the whole picture determine the work.
As we live our lives, we can become so swamped by its daily demands and duties that we can feel that we have lost the plot. When things get tough, this is the time when we most need to step back and try to see things in the big picture, and the biggest and best picture is the way God looks at our life, that is with love. In the light of that love, we can start to see the design that is being drawn in our lives and we will discover that mess and muddle is often the place of God’s best, creative design.
Loving God, give me a glimpse now and then of the big picture you are drawing in my life and let it give me the confidence to lovingly face my daily challenges. I ask this in Jesus’ name, confident that you will hear me.
Sr Kym Harris osb
