[Faith-talk] Daily Thought for Wednesday, January 29, 2014

[Paul]

Hello and good day to you all, whether that time of day be morning, afternoon or evening.  You in Australia and New Zealand are in your mornings, whereas you in the UK and Europe are in your evenings as this is being written.  Here in North America most of us are in our afternoons, but you on the West Coast are in your late morning.  Whatever your time of day it is in your area when you read this, I hope that your day is going well.  For those of you who are still caught in the grip of the inclement weather in the southern U.S., stay warm, calm and collected.  Hope you don't get "cabin fever."

K.S. Hardy lives in the state of Ohio and wrote an article recently entitled "The Basket," rendered as follows:

Consider the basket.  In ancient civilizations it was one of the objects of craftsmanship.  Someone in those long ago days, when humans lived on what they could hunt or harvest, thought it would be convenient to take what was left from the gathering back to their home to share and save for the next day.  And perhaps that same person was inspired to take the stiff grass by the pathway, pluck it from its stem, and weave it to form a simple container.

The idea caught on.  Not only could it be used to carry the fruit from the tree, the berry from the bush, but its basic idea could be adapted for other uses.  In some cultures the basket was used to carry babies on the mother's back.  Others developed the idea further, making fish traps, which later became nets.  And we can see the same interlacing in some types of fencing used to corral livestock.  And when humans graduated from using the skins of animals as clothing and moved into cloth, the technique that was used to turn blades of grass into a basket was used to weave thread into cloth.

In biblical literature the basket appears in several places, most notably as the faith-filled vehicle of transport for the baby Moses down the river Nile.  And then later in the same life story as the containers in which the manna from heaven was gathered to feed the tribes of Israel as they were lost in the wilderness of their exodus.  Books and centuries later, as the container from which loaves and fishes were distributed to feed the gathered multitude.

The basket is a utilitarian device of great use in many ways, but it is also symbolic.  Its simple construction--composed of strong spines forming the more pliant weavings into a beautiful and useful structure.  This is also a metaphor for our churches.  The spines are the elders or leaders of the group who hold the church together.  The weavings make up the congregation, at times standing in support behind the spine and then alternating to the fore to check or contain the spines.  As it is in real life, the weavings, those of us in the congregation, alternate behind standing behind or in front of the spines, our leaders.

A well-made basket requires cooperation.  Without the spines the weavings would be a pile of grass; without the weavings, the spines would be a pile of sticks.  But made to work together they can be woven into a simple form to create an object of beauty and use.

Consider the basket and how we can use its lesson in cooperation to make us simple yet beautiful containers of faith and deliverers of charity.

And there you have K.S. Hardy's contribution today, which I hope was a blessing to you.

And now may the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob just keep us safe, individually and collectively, in these last days in which we live.  Your Christian friend and brother, Paul