Trying to Catch a Glimpse

J.R.R. Tolkien once wrote a short story called “Leaf by Niggle.” The main character, Niggle, is a painter. He envisions painting a grand tree set against a countryside and even a forest in the picture, along with mountains and birds and the tree's deep, strong roots.

But he keeps getting interrupted in his work by neighbors, the needs of others, and the responsibilities of everyday life. Those around him don't understand why he even bothers painting at all. There's far more important work to do. And so despite Niggle's best efforts at painting, he can't quite make the image on the canvas match the image in his mind. Parts of it are barely completed, “and only so so, at that.”

Eventually, Niggle passes away and travels through a sort of purgatory and eventually to heaven. At one point on the journey, he rides a bicycle down a hill and is met with the most astonishing sight: a Tree, his Tree.

Tolkien writes, “He went on looking at the Tree. All the leaves he had ever laboured at were there, as he had imagined them rather than as he had made them; and there were others that had only budded in his mind, and many that might have budded, if only he had had time.”

Niggle continues through this new country, realizing he was wandering along in his picture, the one he'd imagined but never had time to finish painting. His traveling companion, Parish (who used to be his neighbor), also realizes they're traveling in Niggle's picture, and he's astounded. He wonders why Niggle never told him about this clever creation, to which another man replies:

"He tried to tell you long ago," said the man; "but you would not look. He had only got canvas and paint in those days, and you wanted to mend your roof with them. This is what you and your wife used to call Niggle's Nonsense, or That Daubing."[1]

"But it did not look like this then, not real," said Parish.

"No, it was only a glimpse then," said the man; "but you might have caught the glimpse, if you had ever thought it worth while to try.

Like Niggle, I dream of painting a proverbial tree stretching its branches out over a grand landscape. But I can barely get a few leaves done, and everything I try to do never turns out quite as I'd hoped, always tarnished by grief or pain or the realities of life that keep me from feeling like the thing could ever be truly finished.

It's so easy for us to wonder if the meager work we've done each ordinary day of this life will ever amount to anything–if the toddler's owie we soothed or the meal we made or the report we completed or the time we gave will ever add up to anything of significance. It's hard to see sometimes how God might use each zig and zag of our lives for eternal good when at every turn sits a pile of brokenness threatening to bury us.

But then I remember Niggle. And I wonder if maybe one day when heaven comes to earth, the metaphorical leaves we've painted will have grown and matured and become far more than we could have ever imagined.

Maybe one day we'll see how God took the words we wrote and the food we cooked and the garden we tended and made something far grander with it. Maybe, whether our work includes parenting or poetry, pastoring or painting, what we see now is only a faint glimpse of what we will someday see face to face.

And so maybe, just maybe, our work today is to keep trying to catch those glimpses.

Onward, friends.

[1] Quotes from “Leaf by Niggle” found in The Tolkien Reader.