I grew up with cameras. My father was a
professional photographer; and so, my childhood vocabulary included “film
speed,” “f-stop,” and “darkroom.” I knew how develop photographs while I was
still in grade school, and I could use an industrial photographic drier long
before I could drive a car. But photography has changed a lot since my dad was
in business. These days, cameras are digital, photos are stored on a computer,
and negatives don’t even exist. In fact, the kind of film that I used to use
isn’t even made any more! But some things haven’t changed at all. Taking a good
photograph still involves more than standing in front of a tourist attraction
and holding up a selfie stick! In fact, some of the best photographs aren’t of
ourselves at all, but of the world around us. And although capturing images of
what’s around us no longer means holding up a light meter and fiddling with
camera settings, it still involves some choices.
One choice that we still have to make is
what to use as the focus of the photo. Are we going to focus on something very
small, something very large, or something in between? Usually our photos are
those in-between shots – a photo of the gathered family in front of the
Christmas tree, for example. From time to time, we decide to take a picture of
something very small. I took a recent photo of a tiny grasshopper that had
settled on the windshield of my car; and it was a good enough picture that I
could see the ridges on the little guy’s hind legs when I enlarged it. (It was
a very lucky shot!) And every now and then, we want to capture a whole vista. Those
are the photos that have the potential to take our breath away! Who doesn’t
stand in awe of a picture of the moon rising over the ocean; or of the
snow-capped Rocky Mountains? Ansel Adams was a master at taking those kinds of
photos. It’s tough to get that kind of photograph with a pocket-sized digital
camera. To really capture the vastness of a landscape, you still need a camera
that has a wide-angle lens. That kind of lens captures a wide field of view,
the kind of view that we don’t often stop and enjoy. Oh, when we’re on vacation
in the Great Smoky Mountains, we might park the car at a pull-off spot and look
around in awe. But every day? No, we don’t look through a wide-angle lens every
day. But maybe we should, especially on the days when everything seems to be
going wrong. On those days, we tend to bury our noses in our problems and
ignore what’s all around us. And there’s a good reason for that. We concentrate
on what’s bothering us because we want to figure out a way to get rid of it! If
you’re walking with a blister on your heel, you’re not very likely to be
thinking about the beauty of the scenery along the way! But even – maybe
especially – in the middle of difficulties, we should be looking through that
wide-angle lens every single day!
Let me tell you why a wide-angle lens is
vital to our spiritual health. Come back with me to the Middle East in the year
586 BCE. In that year, the Babylonians conquered the nation of Israel, burned
the city of Jerusalem, carried off everything that was in the Temple, and
dragged the people off into exile. The kingdom of King David and King Solomon
that had lasted over 400 years suddenly was no more. Imagine how the Israelites
must have felt! Their nation was gone. Their holy city, Jerusalem, was gone. The
temple that had stood in Jerusalem was gone. They were afraid that their god
was gone, too. And they had to endure the sarcasm of the Babylonians who reminded
them again and again that their gods were stronger than the god of Israel! If
you read Psalm 137, you will catch a glimpse of their despair. It begins like
this.
“By the rivers of Babylon we sat and
wept when we remembered Zion.
There on the poplar trees we hung our
harps.There our captors asked us for songs; our tormentors demanded songs of joy.
They said, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’
How can we sing the songs of the Lord while we are in a foreign land?”
But in the middle of that Babylonian
exile, an amazing thing happened. One day, somebody lifted his eyes out of the
dust and looked through a wide-angle lens. That somebody started saying things
like, “God is still here! God’s temple in Jerusalem may be gone, but God is
still here! The heavens are still here. The earth is still here. God will get
us out of this mess, even though I don’t know how that will happen!” And from
the time of the Exile comes the text that we heard just a few minutes ago
(Isaiah 40:21-31). “Don’t you know? Haven’t you heard? God reduces the rulers
of the earth to nothing! Lift your eyes and look to the heavens. Who created
all of these? Why do you complain, ‘My cause is disregarded by my God’? The
Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth! He gives
strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. They will soar on
wings like eagles! They will run and not grow weary; they will walk and not
faint!”
“Look through your wide-angle lens!”
Isaiah is saying. “Stop focusing on your problems and look around! God has
everything under control even if we can’t see it.” Isaiah even compares human
beings to that little grasshopper that rested on my windshield last week. People
are tiny things when they are compared to the God who spoke creation into
existence. Even a great nation like Babylon is like a piece of dry leaf that
the wind whisks away. “Why are we so worried?” Isaiah asks. “God is bigger than
any problem that we have. Remember to look through your wide-angle lens!” That
isn’t a bad thing for us to remember now, either, as we are sometimes
overwhelmed by our own problems. And today’s church does have problems. We are
split into hundreds (if not thousands) of denominations, most of whom don’t
even talk to one another, let alone work together. We have differing opinions
on how to understand the Bible, and because of that, we have differing opinions
on what to do about social problems – both here in the United States, and
around the world. In some places, Christians are persecuted for their faith.
You can’t even carry a Bible in North Korea; and in the places that gave birth
to our faith, Christians are being murdered every day by Muslim extremists.
Local congregations have problems, too, don’t they? Many churches are operating
at a deficit. Our own income hasn’t been enough to cover our expenses since the
first of the year. We have very few young families, and no young children at
all who attend church on a regular basis. And our congregation is getting
older. Who is going to carry on our mission here as the years go by?
I don’t have a solution to any of these
problems. But I do have a suggestion. Let’s take a look though our wide-angle
lens. Let’s focus not on what’s wrong, but
on what’s right! Let’s focus on the
fact that God is way bigger than we are, and God has promised to remain
faithful to us. Let’s focus on the strengths that God has given us, the kinds
of strengths that allow us to run and not to grow weary. We all have gifts,
talents, and resources, and those allow us to do the ministry to which God is
calling us. If we lift our eyes out of the dust, we might even see
opportunities that God has put right in front of our noses so that God can
guide us into the future!
Yes, we need to look through that
wide-angle lens now and then, especially when we start saying “Woe is me!” It’s
always a good thing to listen to what Isaiah said so long ago: “Why do you
think that God doesn’t care about us anymore? Don’t you know? God is
everlasting. God never gets tired. God understands everything! God gives us
strength even when we don’t think we can go on another step. In fact, God gives
us so much strength that one day we will fly like eagles” as God’s Spirit carries
us aloft and bears us along on the wind!
No comments:
Post a Comment