This photo was taken by my friend, Gill Henwood and is of Hawkshead Church emerging from the morning mist.
This mist speaks to me of ‘revealing’, of something that will become clearer as the mist rises; of a beauty present but not yet fully defined.

Today is the time the Christian Church remembers the Conversion of St. Paul, the moment when all that clouded his mind and darkened his thoughts, were lifted by an encounter with the Risen Christ.
We are told of it in the Book of Acts, chapter 9 verses 1 to 19.

Paul or as he was then known, Saul, a zealous Jewish Rabbi, had made it his mission to persecute Christians, those Jews who had chosen to follow the teaching of the Apostles about Jesus. He was responsible for the death and imprisonment of many and was thus thwarting the work of proclaiming the Good News of Jesus.

Something had to be done to stop him and it was the Risen Christ who did so. As Paul travelled along the road to Damascus, the Risen Christ  appeared and light flashed around him. Paul was blinded by the light and fell to the ground. It was as if a dark mist enveloped him and in the darkness Jesus challenged him, Why are you persecuting me?’ Paul asked who he was and the revelation came to him that it was Jesus.
Paul’s heart was converted but though his eyes were opened, he could still not see. First, his spiritual blindness had to be lifted; something Jesus arranged and then Paul became the great champion of Christianity he was destined by God to be.

For me there is something autobiographical in Paul’s famous passage in his first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 13.
Having written his classic definition of ‘love’, He made the point that only love will carry us through to the heart of God and that is both our faith and hope.
He referred back to his own lack of understanding of the power of God’s love (verse 8 following) and reminds us that on our spiritual journey we move, often haltingly, to a deeper knowledge of love, as God shares His divine love with us. At first our perception of God’s love is as if we are looking through a mirror dimly’ or as the King James Version puts it, through a glass darkly, but then, as God continues to reveal his Love to us, we shall one day meet Him as Love face to face.

Gill’s photograph of Hawkshead Church suggests to me another illustration of this. Our experience of God’s love for us, may seem at times to be as if we are looking through the mist of understanding. It contains all that will be revealed but we must let God work in our souls as he did in Paul’s. Then, slowly but surely, the mist will lift and the glorious vision will open our eyes and our hearts to a deep and abiding love.
In the photo we already see the promise coming clearer. The scene contains all that needs to be revealed. So that is for us. If we open ourselves to the possibility of God lifting from us all that prevents His love to flourish, then it will become a reality.

The Conversion of Saint Paul

Brooding mist 
blurs edges of perception.
Colours muted.
A whisper of wind kisses the air
rippling through the soul.
Visibility impaired,
a cloak of quietness drawn across the mind.
Stilling all movement.
Intentions passionately  held,
melt into deep darkness.
Yet this is not the cause of fearfulness 
nor of despair.
Out of the shadows,
of seeing “through a glass darkly”
there is a pinprick of growing light
which slowly, perceptively,
burns away the haze
as new vision takes shape.

A Voice,
crisp, gently directive,
unfettered by illusion,
beckons,
touching  eyes to see a wonder,
“face to face.”
The waypath is irrevocably changed.

[Mr. G. Conversion of Paul. 25th January ]