Captured!
7 For we live by faith, not by sight.
2 Corinthians 5:7
"Take a picture of that one!" or "Make sure you get this one", I hear my grandpa chiming over my shoulders as we walk the streets of Vienna. Luck would have it he dropped and broke his camera on the first leg of our trip, leaving me as sole photographer for the rest of the journey.
Slightly frustrated by this role, I am doing my best to not only take in all of the beauty and experience the culture, but also to capture just what he wants in pictures. I find myself considering to what extent we need this all in photographs. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy that I will have a collection of photos to help me remember my journey and everything I saw, but pictures only capture so much. The stories behind the pictures, the sounds, the smells, the feeling don't come alive until I put my experiences with them. Until I describe what each one is or where I took it and why.
As much as I'd love to go home and with my pictures allow all my friends and family to experience the journey I took, that will not be possible. Pictures alone, looking on from the outside, do not tell the whole story!
Sometimes I find myself living my faith like looking through someone else's pictures. I want to sit on the couch and flip through a pile of pretty scenery. It's easy that way. It's like going on vacation, without paying the money. I could travel the world simply looking through pictures. But what those pictures don't tell is the experience.
Maybe they don't tell how miserable and long the flight was or how beautiful the trees actually were. Maybe they don't allow you to feel the relief of finally reaching that building it took you twenty times to find, or the pure goodness that was that piece of chocolate cake.
It's easy for us, I think, to look at our faith from the outside. Kind of do the checklist. Go to mass, pray, check off the ten commandments. Maybe we watch God work in other people's lives and let that knowledge of His love satisfy us. We hear the stories, but we don't let Him in to build stories in our lives. We can watch from the outside refusing to really dive into the adventure. Or we only turn to our faith in times of struggle. Or only look to God when life is going good. It's easy to fit our faith into a small pile of pictures that we pull out when we want to show them off!
But God wants us to experience our faith fully alive. He wants us, in all our moments, to capture what it means to be a disciple of Christ. And I've realized that that is something that can't be captured in a 4x6 photo. It's bigger than that. It's experiencing the whole story with Christ as your lead. It's making the whole trip, the good, the bad, and the ugly. It's committing to Him as your guide and being willing to do whatever that entails, knowing full well that all the while He is walking beside you!
Our faith isn't a picture we look at only when we need a reminder, or are longing to be where we once were. If we want a true relationship with Christ, we have to come to Him every day, bringing Him all that we are and all that we hope to be! God has an experience, a journey, a trip planned out especially for you! Don't just flip through someone else's pictures, go live the beautiful story He has waiting with your name on it! He has placed a call in your heart, our faith is hearing that call and living, full, the adventure, so that the story it tells is better than anything that could be captured in a snapshot!
2 Corinthians 5:7
"Take a picture of that one!" or "Make sure you get this one", I hear my grandpa chiming over my shoulders as we walk the streets of Vienna. Luck would have it he dropped and broke his camera on the first leg of our trip, leaving me as sole photographer for the rest of the journey.
Slightly frustrated by this role, I am doing my best to not only take in all of the beauty and experience the culture, but also to capture just what he wants in pictures. I find myself considering to what extent we need this all in photographs. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy that I will have a collection of photos to help me remember my journey and everything I saw, but pictures only capture so much. The stories behind the pictures, the sounds, the smells, the feeling don't come alive until I put my experiences with them. Until I describe what each one is or where I took it and why.
As much as I'd love to go home and with my pictures allow all my friends and family to experience the journey I took, that will not be possible. Pictures alone, looking on from the outside, do not tell the whole story!
Sometimes I find myself living my faith like looking through someone else's pictures. I want to sit on the couch and flip through a pile of pretty scenery. It's easy that way. It's like going on vacation, without paying the money. I could travel the world simply looking through pictures. But what those pictures don't tell is the experience.
Maybe they don't tell how miserable and long the flight was or how beautiful the trees actually were. Maybe they don't allow you to feel the relief of finally reaching that building it took you twenty times to find, or the pure goodness that was that piece of chocolate cake.
It's easy for us, I think, to look at our faith from the outside. Kind of do the checklist. Go to mass, pray, check off the ten commandments. Maybe we watch God work in other people's lives and let that knowledge of His love satisfy us. We hear the stories, but we don't let Him in to build stories in our lives. We can watch from the outside refusing to really dive into the adventure. Or we only turn to our faith in times of struggle. Or only look to God when life is going good. It's easy to fit our faith into a small pile of pictures that we pull out when we want to show them off!
But God wants us to experience our faith fully alive. He wants us, in all our moments, to capture what it means to be a disciple of Christ. And I've realized that that is something that can't be captured in a 4x6 photo. It's bigger than that. It's experiencing the whole story with Christ as your lead. It's making the whole trip, the good, the bad, and the ugly. It's committing to Him as your guide and being willing to do whatever that entails, knowing full well that all the while He is walking beside you!
Our faith isn't a picture we look at only when we need a reminder, or are longing to be where we once were. If we want a true relationship with Christ, we have to come to Him every day, bringing Him all that we are and all that we hope to be! God has an experience, a journey, a trip planned out especially for you! Don't just flip through someone else's pictures, go live the beautiful story He has waiting with your name on it! He has placed a call in your heart, our faith is hearing that call and living, full, the adventure, so that the story it tells is better than anything that could be captured in a snapshot!
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