Russian Candlesticks

We bought two beautiful candlesticks in St Petersburg. They are the ubiquitous colours on lacquer ware there, very striking and iconic. I assumed they were a pair.

It’s only now as I sit and look at them across the table, with half-consumed candles in them speaking of a fun dinner party the other night, that I realize they have different patterns painted on them. One bulbous part looks fatter on one than the other. One even looks slightly taller than the other. 

They weren’t sold as a pair. They simply clustered on a glass display shelf with a dozen others and we quickly chose them without considering their detail would be different because they share the same colour scheme – red, gold, green and black. But now...one seems to major on strawberries and the other on cherries.

Does it matter?

Not a bit. And it makes me think of the church, where believers wear ‘Jesus colours’ in our cores but our expression of those colours may differ slightly. God has made each one of us unique. We share a commonality in our love for Jesus, and as we are filled with the same Holy Spirit we each display the same ‘colour scheme’. But my gifts are different from your gifts, and my personality is unique. So I may look more like strawberries where you look more like cherries. 

Part of the delight of creation.  God is the grand designer whose eye for the tiniest detail is exquisite, and his joy in the grandest expression of life is contagious.