Framed Wisdom | Previous Challenge Entry

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TITLE: Framed Wisdom | Previous Challenge Entry
By Gordon Lavoie
04/20/09
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Our church had just called a new Pastor and I was helping him move some files from his apartment to the church office. He was not a novice to the ministry by any means, actually quite an elderly man and needed someone with a strong back to help him with the heavier boxes. With his age came wisdom though, in fact he was well known for his discerning intellect. As a published author he had a deserved reputation for giving birth to many original and insightful thoughts. Truly a deep thinker, we were definitely blessed to have him.

It was time for a break and he offered me a cup a tea as a refresher. He led me to the living room and disappeared into the kitchen to boil the water. The first and only thing noticeable about the room was it’s large almost bare feature wall. I say almost bear, because there were two out of place paintings which hung oddly towards the left of the room. As an additional offence, under each picture were obvious hand written words, shoddily scribbled, seemingly hurriedly penned, and they were even off-center to their respective paintings. Beneath the first picture were the words, “the beginning” and the words directly below the second read, “at the end.”

At first, I felt disappointment, I had expected nothing short of good taste and sophistication. As I came to my senses I realized the words and pictures must have some weighty meaning. Now, my powers of deductive reasoning would be put to the test. What is this momentous wisdom which rests in front of me? It might have been easy if they were pictures of biblical accounts, but they were pictures of horses. Horses! What could they mean? In the first picture three horses were frolicking playfully in a corral, in the second four different horses were free and grazing in a field of wild grasses. I think there could be a relationship in Revelation, there is reference to a white horse and our King upon it, but these were black and dark brown in color. There was horses and horsemen in Genesis but nothing I could remember about corrals. The number of them, three, it could have allusion to the three persons of the God head, but what about the four horses in the next picture. There were clouds in the second painting, at the end Christ will come in clouds. There were birds in the first, no doves though, no Raven like with Noah. Wait a minute, I think I see it. It could be. “Yes!”

In my excitement of discovery I mistakenly had said “yes” out loud, just as Pastor entered the room with my tea. “I guess your wondering about the paintings, huh.” He walked over to the wall and swung the art to their sides revealing that the words I saw were but the last words of two separate poems the previous tenant had written on the wall. “Just harmless graffiti.” he said, “Who ever lived here before me inscribed it before they left. The manager said he’d paint over it next week, so I just hung these pictures over them for now. Never quite covered it all, but I couldn’t find any pictures large enough to conceal the entire thing. Hope you never strained your brain thinking there was some profound message or deep meaning to it all.”

“Of course not, I hardly gave them a second thought.” As he turned back to the kitchen for milk and sugar I notice a grin breaking out upon his face. I think he suspects different. Truth be known, I think he knows.

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