Categories: uncategorized
Date: 19 July 2011 14:43:47
The roundabout near our church currently has flowers on it saying 24:7. I don't have a camera or I would take the picture of it but it is very poignant.
I don't know who put them there, or whether a local church has got 24:7 prayer going on or what. The thing is though it made me smile. Third Party and I saw it and we knew what 24:7 meant in our language, we started discussing which church it might have been. Our guess was the local Salvation Army. Most people in trying to work out what it meant would have had totally different conversations, it's an abstract talking point.
In this case 24:7 is I suspect simply a piece of decoration, public art with flowers. As I indicated though, in my mind, I associate it with 24:7 prayer initiatives and church activity. Seeing it several times since, though, has unnerved me, and I can't exactly put my finger on why.
I think on level I have a sense of dissonance going on. The church is literally next to the roundabout and it is a church I love. It is a church which is engaging with people and seeking to be really outward looking, but somehow there is a gap between it and the message on the roundabout. The message on the roundabout is "out there"; "inviting people to ask more" and "think what the relevance is". In the mind of Christians like me it raises challenging questions about "who put it there?", "is it a church thing or simply an art thing?" Do I live it "out there" 24:7 or do I expect people to go in the church doors?
The other weird thing, which I think unnerves me slightly is that the road it is on is one I know well in the day time and in the evening. I wait for the bus there, I wander down there chatting to door staff and bus station staff with Streetlights sometimes. Yet, the street and the church seem strangely disconnected in my experience and so does the roundabout. The beauty of the flowers seems at odds with it all.
I'm not articulating this well but the 24:7 flowers on the roundabout are stirring me and I wanted to share them with you.