7th October 2020

Do you know this poem called the Bright Field? It’s one of my favourites. In it the author, R. S. Thomas, merges two of the Kingdom of Heaven parables that Jesus told, so that the pearl of great price becomes the treasure buried in a field.

I have seen the sun break through to illuminate a small field

For a while and gone my way and forgotten it.

But that was the pearl of great price, the one field that had the treasure in it.

I realise now that I must give all that I have to possess it.

Life is not hurrying on to a receding future, not hankering after an imagined past. It is the turning aside like Moses to the miracle of the lit bush,

To a brightness that seemed as transitory as your youth once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

I have been pondering on these words over the past weeks as I wanted to paint the ideas expressed in the verse, just as I used to choreograph a dance from a theme.

This exercise became a study of Matt 13.44-46. It has brought home to me the significance and importance of searching and finding the treasure of the Kingdom of Heaven on my life’s journey. I realise all the love, beauty, kindness, and goodness that continually surrounds me has given to me joy, fulfillment, and blessings.  God’s Holy Spirit has touched me and moved me through the realisation of knowing something of His Kingdom and continues to teach me to hang on to the things that are of real value.

In this confused world, the unchanged treasures of the kingdom remain, for us to seek after and to discover the only way to know God’s peace.

Elizabeth Webb