Picture an Apple

Have you ever read that post going around that talks about the different ways people visualize an apple?

Basically, it says to imagine an apple, and then to choose what your imagined apple looks like on a scale from vivid and bright, to a simple line-sketch, to black and white, to nothing.

Some people can visualize just as bright and clear as real life - and do, all the time. Some people have fuzzier, sketchier mental pictures. And some have no image for their mental picture at all.

I'm in the last group. When someone tells me to picture an apple, my brain holds space for the concept of an apple, but I don't actually see an apple in my mind's eye (tbh, I'm a little unsure if I have a mind's eye lol).

This makes it really hard for me to know what my face is doing. I'm often surprised when I see pictures of myself or catch a glimpse on a reflection of my expression because I had no idea my face was doing anything at all. I can't picture my own face, and I can't control it very well either. It is kind of living its own life out there in front where you all can see it but I have no idea what's going on on it.

I could tell you what I'm feeling - I could probably describe it in detail - but if someone asked me to make my face show some feeling or another,  whatever contortions I made would just be a shot in the dark. 

It's how I see people, too. I am not really good at describing people because I don't actually remember what they look like. (I'm not face blind, because I can usually recognize someone I've met before, but did they have a moustache? Glasses? Freckles? Bangs? I have no clue.)

The thing that imprints on my heart most is how I felt in their presence. 

The other morning, one of my coworkers called me Janelleybean, a nickname my sisters used to call me when I was growing up. I felt this warm and cozy feeling, and it has been added to my mental concept of this person (who I've already mentally categorized as hardworking and funny and strong and blunt and safe). I can't tell you what her hair looked like or what she was wearing (and although I see her every day, I don't even know if she has glasses), but now when someone mentions her name, all the layers of our interactions are piled up together into a heap of feelings and impressions that help me know more about her than what she looks like.

And.

While I wish I had a better awareness of what is going on on the front of my face, I think this is why we get to read about the story of Christmas, and why the Bible is so spare on visual details. 

Not one speck of Christmas scripture is dedicated to telling us how they looked; that little family or those shepherds or wise men. How they looked is left blank. Was the Christ child bald? Did his mother have maternity acne? What kind of beard did Joseph have, and how trim were his toenails? 

But -

What did God do, and what did they do (and what did they mean by that, and why did the writer share that part and not some other)? Now those are parts of the story that's going to show us a glimpse of God's heart, and build up a sense of who He is in ours.

To reference my favourite Heritage Minute star, Marshall McLuhan, the medium is the message. The scriptures are words and not paintings because the point of Christmas isn't how it looks, and the value of Christmas isn't found in how pretty it can be (and I mean no insult by this; I've seen your houses and your photos, I know you can make it gorgeous 😍). It's hard for me to see the story in my nonexistent mind's eye. I don't picture Mary and Joseph and baby Jesus when I read or write about them. But I've got a sense of what mattered to them, and what God did through them, and for us, by them. 

The point of Christmas is God reaching into our world and saying, "I'm with them." 

The Word 

Made flesh.

However it happens to have looked.

Merry Christmas, friends. 

Xo.