HAVE you come across those screens that are installed in many doctors’ surgeries nowadays?

I wonder if, like me, you stand before them feeling somewhat challenged as you struggle to find the right button to press.

I’ve had similar experiences elsewhere when buying tickets from a machine. Often my daughter will step in with exasperation at my slowness in responding to the instructions on the screen.

Research has shown, however, that this is all quite normal. Young people and those accustomed to working with computer screens have learnt to read them with a different set of skills from that which I learnt of reading from left to right, line by line, on a page.

My daughter’s eyes will dart all over the screen picking up the information she needs long before I’ve even completed the first instruction. It seems that more and more people are looking at things very differently.

No surprise then that my attention was caught by an article about the current David Hockney exhibition at the Royal Academy, in which that observation was made.

Hockney was talking about how his return to landscape painting was seen by some as old-fashioned, that there was nothing new to do with it.

However, he felt that it was the method of depicting the landscape that was worn out, not the landscape itself. “There’s always another way of looking, of observing,” he said.

Perhaps then, as ministers of the Gospel, it’s something of a shared responsibility to make sure that people who do read the world differently from us can meet Jesus in ways that make sense to them.

Our way of “looking” may not work for them. A different view and a different setting may be required and, although we may find ourselves longing for what we know and recognise, that other way of looking might just move and intrigue us too.

In embracing another way of looking at age 75, Hockney has included iPad paintings in his exhibition. A reviewer noted that it felt like he was moving onto new things and the artist’s response was emphatically affirmative: “I’m only just finishing my middle period!”

Could it be then that another, different way of looking at what is familiar and treasured might just give us a new lease of life?