For me this is where it starts getting difficult to write without sounding like a big-head as I deal with the next subject, which is ‘Insight’
I worked with a man called Haydn Dennis from Swansea who was not only responsible for training me in the field of architecture but more importantly he led me to Christ. One day we had a window cleaner come into the office bringing with him the triangular ladder he used and Haydn asked him why this tool of the trade was shaped in such a way? The answer was that it allowed him to rest the ladder firmly on the mullion of the window in order to clean it. After this conversation Haydn passed on the following nugget of wisdom to me ‘Treat everything as if it is the first time you have seen it.’ This simple principle has helped me in so many ways, both in my day to day work but more importantly when reading scripture. Of course this is totally dependent on me actually not being in too much of a rush to remember it in the first place.
That I believe is one of the reasons Jesus used children as an example of how our faith should be and that was to demonstrate childlike (not childish) qualities in how we should approach the things of God with that insatiable curiosity. I imagine that each of us at some time whether we are parents or not have been asked a question by a child only to be asked ‘Why?’ in return to each successive answer we provide. Let me ask you this: Do we do the same when we sit down with the Bible?
From my own experience it is an altogether infrequent thing for me. However, when I do get my act together and delve into something and draw out the context, meaning of a text and even on occasion the actual translation of a single word I find myself coming away far more enlightened than usual and realising just how rich God’s word actually is when we dig into it. I imagine this is also why for some speakers one message becomes a series. The one thing I have come to realise over and over again is that not one word in scripture is there just for the sake of having words on a page and I have found this to be extremely useful when it comes to place names in the Bible as I found when I wrote a previous blog (entitled: ‘Who’s for a trip to the sewage works?’) where I made mention the Kidron Valley – in this context Kidron means: Making black or sad. Again for me this curiosity is like that proverbial strand to pull at that mentioned I last time. However this time it leads somewhere better, giving me a greater understanding of what God is actually saying.
One of the things that I learnt quite soon after my diagnosis was after staring at a brick wall, yes something so mundane and commonplace it would be easy to ignore. What I realised is applicable to everyone irrespective of whether you are neurotypical or neurodivergent and it was this – Only I at that point in time could see that wall in the way I saw it, whether it was because of the way the shadows were being cast, how the light was being reflected even down to the patterns of the individual bricks and the way they had been laid.
I honestly believe that God from time to time shows each and every one of us something in the way that only He has revealed to us personally – For instance take the way in Jeremiah 18 the prophet sees the work of a potter and the message that comes from it to the nation of Israel. I wish to make the point here that I do not think that Jeremiah or for that matter any prophet is automatically on the spectrum!
For a person with Autism/Asperger’s to convey what God is showing them can be quite difficult not only for them but for those on the receiving end to understand. That is probably one of the reasons I am writing this all down here as it gives me the time to organise all my thoughts instead of having to think then verbalise immediately (this is also the reason why I am the quiet one in meetings!). I might appear to a lot of people that they are being very slow to understand things, this is far from the case as all the thought and possible outcomes are being processed in an incredible amount of detail.
I believe that being able to do this is a gift from God for the benefit of the body of believers as well as from time to time being something very personal and applicable to me.
Image Credit: Ben White
