At a Meeting for Worship that I recently attended, a Friend gave ministry regarding an oak tree situated next to his home. He had walked past this tree every day, often multiple times a day, for nearly fifty years, and had only noticed that morning the unusual size of its leaves. He then went on to talk about how when we become used to something it can blend into the background of our lives, without us seeing its unusual properties and any significance they might have.
The conclusion I drew from this was that it is important to occasionally take a step back and re-examine that which has become overly familiar. I think back to the amount of times I walked past the Quaker Meeting House throughout my life - it sits on my town's secondary high street, opposite the library that I have frequented my whole life. For many years I passed it on a weekly basis, never knowing how much it or the organisation it represents would come to mean to me on a personal level. From the outside it is a building of great ordinariness - not standing out at all from the town around it, until you take a second look and see what makes it unique.
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