one thing i have been noticing over the years, though, is how the photo so often does NOT reflect the reality. somehow reds are troublesome to capture: the rich gradations of velvet red in a flower get lost in a blob of brilliance once the photo is taken. i throw so many photos away of gorgeous red flowers... here are examples:
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| all detail is lost... |
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| instead of the striking tulips these were to my eyes, they appear as simple red blobs... |
another 'aarrrgh!'-worthy part of photography here in town where i live is all the man-made structures that get in the way of my photographs. when i am driving down the road and i see incredible colors pop, i snap a photo, thrilled. but when i look at the photo i've just taken, it is so often criss-crossed with electric lines or jumbled with houses or cut off by telephone poles. half the work of taking photos these days is trying to find an angle that eliminates all these ridiculous things!
here are some examples of what my mind thought it was seeing versus what i was actually taking a picture of:
what i thought i saw on the way to work:
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| gorgeous flowering trees, contrasted against each other |
what my photo told me i saw:
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| telephone poles, sidewalk, and road in front of little trees??! |
what i saw out my front window:
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| a gorgeous tree bursting with flowers! |
what i really was seeing:
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| my neighbor's cluttery plastic flowers and garden decorations galore |
the winter was no different... you'd think the snow or something could cover our man-made junk, but my photos tell a different story.
the majestic pines i thought i was capturing:
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| glorious, snow-covered trees reaching to the sky |
what i really caught:
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| how many wires crossing this spot??? SIX??!! |
the incredible puff of cloud i thought i was seeing:
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| stunning... |
the distraction i really saw:
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| more wires?? really? |
the sunset i saw as i drove down the main drag by our house:
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| a startling view of God's sky |
what was in the way:
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| still a beautiful sky, but marred by street lights and signs... |
at Christmas time, i looked in our window from outside and saw our little tree, looking so cute and bright through the window. i saw:
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| the cutest little brightly-lit tree in the cutest little window! |
apparently i was really seeing:
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| dim colors, and mostly reflections in the glass of trees and sky and our sidewalk lamp... |
and how about that gorgeous soft sunlight that catches the trees just so when the deep blue clouds behind them set their color afire? i saw:
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| stunning blues against yellowy leaves |
what did i get???
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| shining wires, grey-brown rooftops, more neighbor clutter, and a no parking sign?? |
what does it matter? so i took some photos and they didn't turn out how i saw them. move on, right?
but take a moment to ponder what that means about your eyes. do you realize how amazing your senses are??? not only do your eyes take in all the input at lightning speeds and relay all that information to your brain, but there is a part of that visual assembly line that filters out unnecessary things so that you SEE a modified image in your brain! scientists say it's in the thalamus and the visual cortex. incredible. we know those other things are in the picture, but our brain picks out the beauty so we can enjoy what we see.
even while you've been reading this, think of your whole field of vision for a moment: the rest of the computer screen, the border of the blog window, the keyboard, the room around you - it's all filtered out so you can concentrate on what you read. awesome!
it reminds me of the same thing i learned in nursing school about our sense of hearing. we hear SO much, but our auditory system tunes out all the 'extra' stuff so that we can hear what's relevant. that's how we can be in a room full of people, but concentrate on one conversation. when we drive our car, we don't even hear the rumble of the engine as loudly as we hear the thoughts in our head!
but if we want to, if we focus on it, we can hear those little sounds, we can see the rest of our field of vision.
it all comes down to focus.
i read an old writing by charles spurgeon that my husband forwarded to me today. it talked about how we pray. i find, personally, that i have a really hard time focusing on praying. i start with all the best intentions, but before i even realize it, my mind has often wandered to other topics. or if i pray laying in bed when i can't fall asleep, the next thing i know is that i've fallen asleep! how is it so hard to focus?! charles spurgeon put it like this:
The common fault with most of us is our readiness to yield to distractions. Our thoughts go roving hither and thither, and we make little progress towards our desired end.... How great an evil this is! It injures us, and what is worse, it insults our God. What should we think of a petitioner, if, while having an audience with a prince, he should be playing with a feather or catching a fly?that's me: audience with the King and here i am distracted by a feather.
it IS insulting. it IS sinful. God tells us to pray continually, to be in constant communion with Him, to live our lives as though we have constant audience with the King. that's the reality. we DO have constant audience with Him!
how dare i push Him to the side! how dare i tune Him out like the buzzing noise of electricity in my ears, or like the wires criss-crossing my vision!
really, i think we were created with amazing physical details so we can relate them to our spiritual life. we were made to treat God the way our bodies automatically treat the things we focus on: that conversation in a room full of people, that brilliant sunset behind street signs.
while our body does these things naturally, we must train our hearts to focus on God. it doesn't come naturally to our sinful selves.
may we grow to focus on what matters. may we see God's beauty and His holiness and tune out the distractions!
by the way, the gorgeous photos of what i thought i was seeing are all from corbis.com, an incredible photo website. :)
and the charles spurgeon clip was from april 12, out of his devotional, Morning and Evening.
Convicting, and well said! Once again...
ReplyDeletethank you, my love, for all your encouragement! and thank you for being a wonderful, prayerful, loving husband, who even reads my blog posts!!! :)
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