My favorite feature of a camera isn’t the high light
sensitivity, it’s not the intervalometer for time-lapse photos, it’s not even
the gorgeous video it takes, but the simple ability to capture moments in time,
or memories as they affectionately called.
There isn’t always something special about the photograph, it may not
even be taken well, or occasionally out of focus. Though somehow these things
don’t seem to matter as much. The people
in the photo, they matter, they mean the world to us.
My singles group at church do service projects, now and
again. Recently we’ve been cleaning the common areas of the apartments the
church owns. We purchased the apartments to help people trying to get their
life back together, and it seems to have positively affected the neighborhood
as well, praise the LORD. This Sunday, however, we replaced the wood on a very
tired picnic bench at said apartments.
Several of us had forgotten this and were not dresses
appropriately, and by not appropriately I mean they were wearing heals! This
didn’t stop them, and it made me proud. It was a simple thing we did, and only
took about two hours. They laughed we shared though, those will last a lifetime.
My camera we being a little temperamental, always wanting to bring the
background into focus when it was the foreground I wanted. It might have helped
to strap the flash on for fill light. In the end the photos were just decent
and I became a little discouraged, then I remembered my epiphany.
It was another Sunday morning a few weeks prior, I was
driving to church, my camera in my backpack
(I’m rarely without it), and the LORD spoke to me. It was nothing
audible, which was unfortunate as I had some questions for our great King. I
have been taking pictures of my family, my friends, and those I love, for some
time now, and there is a feeling I get when I take these picture, but up until
this point I had not been able to describe it. This is what the LORD told me:
It’s that feeling you get when you know everything is going to
be okay, because the people in the picture with you, love you. They loved you
then, and now, and if you left, they’d miss you.
So capture your moments, your adventures in this journey we
call life. Don’t just photograph what’s attractive or eye-catching, photograph
memories, and in the in the end you may just find you like those blurry,
over-exposed photos better.
