Photographs of God

This short limbo in which I find myself not currently taking a class is drawing to a close. Another semester of seminary will begin next week, and tomorrow I "officially" start my new job in the Student Services office. These transitions have me racing to tie up loose ends I have left dangling free throughout the past few months. Tonight I straightened my desk and filed and put away gatherings of papers and such that have accumulated right under my nose. I like a clean desk - makes me want to write. Makes me feel like I have the ability to accomplish things.

Tonight I spent a significant amount of time sorting through photographs that have been strewn about my bedroom for days to weeks, for weeks to months. Some were new, some were old, some I do not ever remember taking or posing for, but almost all summoned these little, flash-quick memories to jump into my mind. I find this a slightly odd phenomenon - that a single, still image can spur the mind to recall a detailed memory, in all its motion and emotion. I remember how hot it was that day ... That was when he was telling that stupid joke but still had us gasping for air ... Look how thin I was there - what in the world have I been eating since then? ... Wow, she has always been gorgeous, and this is a great example ... Oh, that was the day he got that job ... Oh, that was taken right around the time I found out she died ...

Video cameras and those new DVD recorders and all those other ridiculously advanced, technological gizmos are all well and good ... but there is nothing like a snapshot. There's nothing like a photograph. Though you are gazing into a single, motionless rendering of a mere nanosecond in a time passed, your mind is suddenly awakened with the most vivid of memories, possibly even many years since that particular camera shuttered on that particular scene. It is you and you alone who sees this memory, and the cherishment you feel is personal and beautiful and all your own. No one can view a photograph the same way.

From a single image comes, to our minds, a flood of actions.



I do not know where this thought came from or where it is going, but it seems to me we are not much different from photographs in the eyes of God. However, I believe God views us in the opposite way that we view a photograph. God, in his unfathomable ways, looks upon all of our actions and motions and emotions all at once - the Creator sees all of us, past and present. But in seeing this, it is all bound up before him like a single photograph. From a lifetime comes, to his mind, a single image. His beloved creation. Each one of us is like this to him, and what is drawn forth, summoned from his heart, is one thing ... Love.

And in this Love he cradles us gently, gazes into every bit of us, and smiles with a desperate yearning. Because, though the scenes in our photographs are only receding further into the past, our Creator rejoices that we are progressing ever closer to him.