Wednesday 26 June 2019

Searching for Perfect Rainbows

Recently a friend introduced me to the game 'Little Alchemy 2' - a game where you mix items together and create the world from scratch. It's ridiculously addictive and stupidly frustrating as you try out every combination possible to try and create the new things that are needed to make the old things disappear.... 

I was pleased to note that early on rainbows appeared.... I love rainbows - one of my favourite things that often appear at the right moment reminding me that I am on the right track and God is with me and things will be OK. Seeing a rainbow, for me, is a reassuring thing that keeps me going when things are uncertain or difficult or challenging decisions have to be made. 

The rainbow in Little Alchemy 2 is perfect - perfectly symmetrical with equal colour strips all in the right order - a beautiful, colourful arch. 

Because Little Alchemy 2 is so addictive, when I was first playing it I ended up playing late at night, and as we all know, late night games infiltrate our dreams.... and I woke up one morning having dreamt that I had been looking for the perfect rainbow - one sitting at the bottom of a Billy Elliot type terraced street, ready to dance into and see the future unfold (yes dreams are weird)..... but I didn't find it. I searched and searched and woke up disappointed. 

Often when I dream weird I reflect on what it might mean - perhaps that I shouldn't play Little Alchemy 2 late at night - or play it at all...... but perhaps the struggle to find a perfect rainbow says something about the reality we are living in (bear with me....).... 

Our struggle for perfection - for the perfect symmetrical rainbow arch - is distracting (not just because dreaming of them makes me procrastinate) - and we miss the beauty in the non-perfect, in the arcs of rainbow (like the one I saw as I walked out of a friend's house just after she had had some bad news), in the rainbows we see in the oil spilt in a puddle, in the rainbow clouds and the momentary glimpse as the sun shining to make the rainbow is hidden by the dark storm clouds. 

There is so much potential for beauty in the imperfect, in the non-symmetrical, in the tiny moments of light - in our search for perfection, we need to not miss the perfectly imperfect. 

In our tendency to seek out the best, we often try to conform what we think we should be.... but in doing that we might miss the place to which we are called to be - which might be more broken than we realise, less symmetrical than we expected, and take us beyond and out of comfort zones much further than we realised..... 

"So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life - your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life - and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit in without even thinking, instead fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out" - Romans 12:1-2 (The Message)


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