These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them
received what had been promised, since God had planned something better
for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect. (Hebrews 11:39-40)
Here is where our pictures belong in the Hall of Faith. I don’t know what sort of portrait we might rate. Perhaps none, but if there is a wing in the hall to show what each of these people we’ve seen were waiting for, I think the paintings in it would be like some that I’ve seen on social media. They are made up of the faces of people. The most recent that I saw was a picture of the twin towers, made up of the faces of the victims of that crime. I suspect that if the people whose portraits we’ve seen had thought in terms of my being part of God’s fulfillment of His promise, they might have said, “Um, Lord?” I’ll bet they would have had the same reaction to you.
But that’s the thing about God’s promises. While you’re praying that today won’t be another Monday, the thirteenth, in an unending sequence of Monday, the thirteenths; or while you’re praying that the test result won’t involve cancer; or while I am praying that the course on which I seem to be heading won’t end in another financial and emotional failure, God is putting together a collage of collages within collages. Each portrait involves the interplay of the lives of others, whose portrait involves the interplay of the lives of still others, including the person in the first portrait. Your portrait includes all the people we’ve discussed over the past week, and the terrorists who flew the jets into the Twin Towers, and Mother Theresa, and your next-door neighbor, and the doctor for whose phone call you’re waiting. Mine includes everyone who will ever read any of my books, all the people with whom I’ve debated, C.S. Lewis, Dallas Willard, lots of dogs, and countless other people whose names or faces I don’t recall. If we’d been paying attention, we would have realized this back in verse 2, but now the author points it out, and we notice.
You may not be pleased that I included the terrorists from 9-11 as part of your portrait. You weren’t part of that. You didn’t want it to happen. Why should something so dark and ugly be part of your portrait (or mine – because they’re in mine, too.) You’d prefer a portrait that is filled with light. As a photographer – as a novice photographer – I tend to forget that I have changed my camera’s mode from automatic to manual, so I snap shots during the day using the same exposure that I used when I took pictures the evening before. Or, it might be the other way, I try to take pictures in the dusk using setting needed for mid-day. Either way, the picture is ruined. Either it’s a blur of shades of white and pale yellow in which you might be able to tell that there’s an object there, or there are slightly darker globs that might (with good imagination) have the outline of something against the slightly less dark background. It is when there is a contrast between light and dark that images and colors stand out, and a picture becomes a thing of beauty.
Here is where our pictures belong in the Hall of Faith. I don’t know what sort of portrait we might rate. Perhaps none, but if there is a wing in the hall to show what each of these people we’ve seen were waiting for, I think the paintings in it would be like some that I’ve seen on social media. They are made up of the faces of people. The most recent that I saw was a picture of the twin towers, made up of the faces of the victims of that crime. I suspect that if the people whose portraits we’ve seen had thought in terms of my being part of God’s fulfillment of His promise, they might have said, “Um, Lord?” I’ll bet they would have had the same reaction to you.
But that’s the thing about God’s promises. While you’re praying that today won’t be another Monday, the thirteenth, in an unending sequence of Monday, the thirteenths; or while you’re praying that the test result won’t involve cancer; or while I am praying that the course on which I seem to be heading won’t end in another financial and emotional failure, God is putting together a collage of collages within collages. Each portrait involves the interplay of the lives of others, whose portrait involves the interplay of the lives of still others, including the person in the first portrait. Your portrait includes all the people we’ve discussed over the past week, and the terrorists who flew the jets into the Twin Towers, and Mother Theresa, and your next-door neighbor, and the doctor for whose phone call you’re waiting. Mine includes everyone who will ever read any of my books, all the people with whom I’ve debated, C.S. Lewis, Dallas Willard, lots of dogs, and countless other people whose names or faces I don’t recall. If we’d been paying attention, we would have realized this back in verse 2, but now the author points it out, and we notice.
You may not be pleased that I included the terrorists from 9-11 as part of your portrait. You weren’t part of that. You didn’t want it to happen. Why should something so dark and ugly be part of your portrait (or mine – because they’re in mine, too.) You’d prefer a portrait that is filled with light. As a photographer – as a novice photographer – I tend to forget that I have changed my camera’s mode from automatic to manual, so I snap shots during the day using the same exposure that I used when I took pictures the evening before. Or, it might be the other way, I try to take pictures in the dusk using setting needed for mid-day. Either way, the picture is ruined. Either it’s a blur of shades of white and pale yellow in which you might be able to tell that there’s an object there, or there are slightly darker globs that might (with good imagination) have the outline of something against the slightly less dark background. It is when there is a contrast between light and dark that images and colors stand out, and a picture becomes a thing of beauty.
Comments
Post a Comment