Free­dom in the Frame

Although we rarely con­sid­er it, the frame which graces a work of art tells us some­thing impor­tant. The con­fines of a frame say, ​“This is the art piece. Focus your atten­tion here, on the sto­ry being told in this image alone.” The frame frees us to focus on the cre­ation in front of us, instead of the wall sur­round­ing it or the oth­er paint­ings hang­ing beside it. 

In the realm of unique­ly Chris­t­ian art, icons serve a sim­i­lar pur­pose. An icon is a rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al depic­tion of a saint or bib­li­cal event which serves to draw us deep­er into the spir­i­tu­al truth por­trayed in the flat, two-dimen­sion­al image. The image itself frames the deep­er truth we are meant to receive.

While trav­el­ing in Ire­land this Novem­ber, my hus­band Drew and I encoun­tered a vast­ness of beau­ty that was dif­fi­cult to take in. Every­where we looked, it seemed, there was a fresh man­i­fes­ta­tion of beau­ty revealed to our sens­es. I found myself fram­ing count­less shots through my cam­era lens, tak­ing hun­dreds of pic­tures in an attempt to cap­ture some­thing of the enchant­i­ng scenery around us. Now, the flat images on my screen serve as icons that evoke the deep joy and awe I expe­ri­enced when explor­ing those sacred land­scapes. In his work Beau­ty: The Invis­i­ble Embrace, Irish author, poet, and priest John O’Donohue describes the gift of tiny win­dows com­mon to tra­di­tion­al cot­tages in West­ern Ireland:

“A small win­dow exer­cised a dis­ci­pline of pro­por­tion in rela­tion to the exter­nal beau­ty. It nev­er offered you the whole land­scape: instead, from every angle you looked, it chose from the land­scape a unique icon for your eyes. The grace of lim­it sug­gest­ed more than your eyes could visu­al­ly grasp.”

Frames and icons offer us the grace of lim­it which helps us shift from mere­ly see­ing an image to behold­ing it. This move­ment from see­ing to behold­ing is evi­dent in the bib­li­cal sto­ry of Job, and it all comes down to the frame. After a sea­son of hor­rif­ic suf­fer­ing and loss, Job is final­ly ready to get a bit cranky with God about it. Why can’t he see God in the midst of his pain? Why is God allow­ing this to hap­pen when Job is inno­cent? God final­ly answers Job’s ques­tions from a whirl­wind that is utter­ly vast in sight, sound, and scope. In the midst of Job’s dark night of suf­fer­ing, God pulls back the veil to reveal his pow­er and care at work in every fiber of cre­ation. How does Job respond after this dis­play? He says this:

“My ears had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you.” (Job 42:5)

See­ing God’s pow­er and pres­ence through the frame­work of his pain moves Job from a spec­u­la­tive pos­ture towards an inti­mate, wor­ship­ful pos­ture. ​“My ears had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you.” It is the frame of Job’s suf­fer­ing that final­ly enables him to move from know­ing about God through hearsay to behold­ing God as he was meant to be seen. Job may not have cho­sen the frame he was giv­en, but it was through that very frame that he met God.

Could it be that our lim­i­ta­tions — our unwant­ed sto­ries of pain and bro­ken­ness — are actu­al­ly what lib­er­ate us to behold God through the par­tic­u­lar frame­work of our lives?

I think of the sto­ry of my divorce — a sto­ry which holds immense shame and regret. Divorce was the one sto­ry I had deter­mined not to tell with my life, yet eight years ago I found myself in the messy mid­dle of it feel­ing bro­ken and betrayed. I cried out to God to end my pain, but he did not. Instead, God gave me a new way of behold­ing beau­ty in bro­ken­ness, his light in my dark­ness — and that has made all the dif­fer­ence. Years lat­er, I can see God’s faith­ful­ness shin­ing through the frame­work of my bro­ken heart­ed­ness. Not only can I trace God’s pres­ence through my land­scapes of pain, but I can also detect beau­ty in the brush­strokes with which he is paint­ing my sto­ry where I once saw only ugli­ness and dark­ness. There is light break­ing forth over dis­tant hills, and from this place I behold the land of the liv­ing. Where I once saw only a pic­ture of bro­ken­ness, I have found grace in the frame of divorce — a grace that frees me to focus on God’s redemp­tion in my sto­ry. This makes me wonder:

What if instead of avert­ing our gaze from the most shame­ful aspects of our sto­ries, we lean in and ask God to show us how to tru­ly see?

Do we dare believe that God’s glo­ry shines all the brighter through the frame of our suf­fer­ing and weak­ness? After the apos­tle Paul prays three times for the thorn in his flesh — his unwant­ed sto­ry — to be tak­en away, God tells him, ​“My grace is suf­fi­cient for you, for my pow­er is made per­fect in weak­ness.” When we go through dif­fi­cult sea­sons we often think, ​“I didn’t want this to be part of my sto­ry.” But because our vast and infi­nite God lim­it­ed him­self in becom­ing human and even fur­ther by dying on the cross, we are part of the most beau­ti­ful and true sto­ry of all.

Jesus — his life, death, and res­ur­rec­tion — is the frame through which we move from see­ing our sin and death to behold­ing our liv­ing God. When we look at our lives through the frame of the cross, we behold our­selves and the world as it is meant to be seen: full of beau­ty, just crack­ling with the pres­ence of God. We see evil and death defeat­ed, and we glimpse the king­dom of heav­en com­ing towards us even as it sur­rounds us now.

Just as the lim­i­ta­tion of small cot­tage win­dows in Ire­land serve to cre­ate an icon from each patch of land­scape, so do our sto­ries frame a unique per­spec­tive which is ours to share. What view of God’s king­dom land­scape does the frame of your life reveal?

May we behold glo­ry with­in the grace of lim­it. May we find free­dom in the frame.

Come and find the qui­et cen­ter
In the crowd­ed life we lead
Find the room for hope to enter
Find the frame where we are freed
Clear the chaos and the clut­ter
Clear our eyes that we can see
All the things that real­ly mat­ter
Be at peace and sim­ply be.
(From ​“Come and Find the Qui­et Cen­ter” by Shirley Ere­na Murray)