Faith and Photography

I’m not a photographer by any stretch of the imagination but I do take a lot of photos. It’s pretty rare a day goes by without me taking a single photo, and even more rare that I’ll just take one whenever I pull out my phone. I go with the idea of take ten photos and delete nine! I used to feel guilty that I took so many, until someone pointed out that it’s just part of who I am as a storyteller. My photos tell stories just as much as the words I write.

Fortunately, digital cameras (and even better, mobile phones!) make it incredibly easy to capture moments, keep thousands of photos, and delete all the bad ones!

I wondered if I was going to have to delete almost every photo I took the other day. My husband and I took our three kids swimming at the local lagoon. It was our littlest one’s first real swim so, of course, I was taking photos.

Thing was, the sun was so bright, I couldn’t actually see what I was taking photos of. My phone screen was just black. I pointed it in what I hoped was the right direction and clicked the capture button but had no idea whether any of the photos would actually work. For all I knew, they were completely out of focus, if I’d even managed to get people’s heads in to start with.

Looking through the photos later, I was delighted to find that the black screen I’d been looking at when I took the photos had miraculously transformed into gorgeously bright, clear pictures.

I took photos blindly in hope, much like I do a lot of things.

God seems to like asking us to do things without knowing the outcome.

But he also delights in surprising us with outcomes beyond our wildest dreams, where we suddenly look back and everything is clear because, unlike us, God can see what’s going on.

Going in to 2017 has been a weird feeling for me. Usually I get all excited about the new year and all the plans and hopes I have for it. I have this little game I play with myself called ‘I wonder where I’ll be this time next year’. Up till now, I’ve had a pretty good idea of what was going to happen each year. Not everything, of course, but a pretty good idea. I knew if I started a grade at school, I’d finish that same grade by the end of the year. Then there were the years I knew I’d meet the child within me before the end of the year. Fairly predictable.

This year, I was faced with the weird realisation that I had no idea. I could get to the end of 2017 and be standing in exactly the same place I was this New Year’s Eve, ‘nothing’ having changed. Still in this house, my family a year older but still the incredible people they are at the same places they are, me still working on getting my books published.

Or, I could be standing in another house, maybe even in another town, my kids at different schools, my book having a contract (hey, I can hope!) and my life changed entirely. It’s such a strange thing to realise that all could be exactly the same, or completely different. Weird.

Like those photos I took which looked only black at the time, I’m in the dark about what will happen this year. But, I’m believing that, just like those photos, I’ll look back sometime – maybe at the end of this year, maybe in a decade or more – and it’ll all make sense.

Because God sees everything – past, present and future. And he’s got me, my family and my dreams for the future, in his hands.

Going into a new year, I can’t think of any other place I’d rather be.